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^ (XL|X 


THE 


MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


A DIGEST OF THE WRITINGS OF 
E LIP HAS LEVI 


WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAY 


BY 

ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE 

/ 


SECOND EDITION 
REVISED AND ENLARGED 


“Mon livre sera sans portae pour mon siecle . . . mais que mimporte? 
J’ai vou6 ma vie a la v<Srit6, et je la dirai pour qui voudra et saura l’entendre. 
Si ce n’est pas dans UN jour, ce sera dans un an, si ce'n’est pas dans UN 

AN, CE SERA DANS UN SIECLE, MAIS JE SUIS TRANQUILLE CAR JE SAIS QU’ON Y 
viENDRA.’’— La Science des Esprits , p. 23. 


LONDON 

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TROBNER & CO. 

I »9 7 


C74~ 

\rn 




5 ^ 534 ^ 

t, 37 



The Memory of 


ALPHONSE LOUIS CONSTANT 


5 bebicate tbts boob 





CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Preface to the Second Edition . . . . xi 

Biographical and Critical Essay— 

§ i. The Life of Alphonse Louis Constant . . . i 

§ 2. Notes on the Mysteries of Magic as expounded in the 

Occult Philosophy of £liphas Levi . . .10 

PART I 

The Threshold of Magical Science 

I. Definitions of Magic ...... 42 

II. Qualifications of the Magus . . . . .49 

III. The Distinction between Magic and Mysticism . . 54 

PART II 

Doctrines of Occult Force 

I. The Hermetic Axiom . . . . .61 

II. Theory of Will-Power ..... 62 

III. The Translucid ... ... 66 

IV. The Great Magic Agent, or the Mysteries of the Astral Light 68 

V. Magical Equilibrium ...... 74 

VI. The Magic Chain ...... 78 

VII. The Great Magical Arcanum . . . .83 

PART III 

The Written Tradition of Magic 

I. The Kabbalah ...... 89 

II. Religion from the Kabbalistic Standpoint . . . 105 

III. Kabbalistic Classics—The Talmud and Talmudists . . 112 

IV. Kabbalistic Dogmas . . . . . .120 

V. On Numbers and their Virtues . . . .134 

vii 



CONTENTS 


viii 


PART IV 


The Doctrine of Spiritual Essences, or Kabbalistic 
Pneumatics 


PAGE 


Introduction . . . . . . .142 

I. Immortality ....... 144 

II. The Astral Body ...... 146 

III. Unity and Solidarity of Spirits .... 149 

IV. The Great Arcanum of Death, or Spiritual Transition . 151 

V. Hierarchy and Classification of Spirits . . .158 

VI. Fluidic Phantoms and their Mysteries . . ,163 

VII. Sum of Kabbalistic Pneumatics .... 168 


PART V 

Ceremonial Magic 

I. Elementary Spirits, and the Ritual of their Conjuration . 171 

II. Necromancy ....... 181 

III. Mysteries of the Pentagram and other Pantacles . . . 189 

IV. Magical Ceremonial and Consecration of Talismans . . 197 

V. Black Magic ....... 208 

VI. Witchcraft and Spells . . . . .219 

VII. Transformations ...... 232 


PART VI 

The Science of the Prophets 

I. Divination ....... 241 

II. Astrology ....... 245 

III. The Book of Hermes, or of Thoth .... 262 


PART VII 

The Science of Hermes 

Introduction ....... 289 

I. The Magnum Opus ...... 291 

II. The Universal Medicine . . . . .301 

III. Renewed Youth ...... 307 




CONTENTS 


lx 


PART VIII 

Key of Magical Phenomena 

PAGE 

I. Spirits in the Bible . . . . . .311 

II. Spirits in the Bible (< continued )—The Resurrection of the 

Dead—The Son of the Sunamite—The Tomb of Eliseus . 316 

III. Spirits in the Gospel—Demons, Possessed Persons, and 

Apparitions . . . . . . 319 

IV. History of S. Spiridion and of his daughter Irene . . 324 

V. Mysteries of Ancient Initiations — Evocations by Blood — 

The Rites of Theurgy—Christianity the Enemy of Blood . 330 

VI. The last Initiates of the Old World: Apollonius of Tyana, 
Maximus of Ephesus, and Julian — The Pagans of the 
Revolution—A Hierophant of Ceres in the Eighteenth 
Century ....... 339 

VII. Spirits in the Middle Ages—The Devil ever plays the chief 
part in the Comedy of Wonders—Archbishop Udo of 
Magdeburg — The Deacon Raymond — Vampires — 
Haunted Houses ...... 345 

PART IX 

Key of Modern Phenomena 

I. The Key of Mesmerism ..... 357 

II. Mysteries of Hallucination ..... 362 

III. Modern Spiritism ...... 369 

PART X 

The Religion of Magic 

I. Faith ........ 3^3 

II. The True God.387 

III. The God of Light and the God of Shadow . . . 391 

IV. The True Christ . . . . • - 393 

V. Mysteries of the Logos ..... 400 

VI. The True Religion ...... 403 

VII. The Reason of Prodigies, or the Devil before Science . 415 





X 


CONTENTS 


PART XI 

The Great Practical Secrets 

PAGE 

I. The Indefectible Principles ..... 422 

II. Eternal Life, or the Peace of God .... 434 

III. Last Words concerning the Great Secret . . . 440 

PART XII 

Thaumaturgical Experiences of Eliphas Levi 

I. Evocation of Apollonius of Tyana . . . 446 

II. Ghosts in Paris—The Magician and the Medium—Eliphas 

Levi and the Sect of Eugene Vintras . . . 450 

III. The Magician and the Sorcerer — Secret History of the 

Assassination of the Archbishop of Paris . . . 464 

EPILOGUE 

Embodying the Spirit of the Author’s Philosophy 


I. The Vision of the Wandering Jew .... 480 

II. The Farewell to Calvary ..... 483 

III. The Reign of Messiah ..... 487 

IV. The Final Vision ...... 488 

The Three Credos of Eliphas Levi 

I. The Creed of the Magus . . . . .491 

II. The Catholic and Magical Symbol .... 494 

III. The Philosophical Credo ..... 495 

Notes ........ 499 

Index ........ 519 


PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 


Ten years have intervened between the first publication of 
this digest of occult philosophy according to the interpretation 
of 6liphas Levi and its issue in the present revised and largely 
extended form. It is rarely, I believe, in the more frequented 
paths of literature that a work enters into a second edition 
after so considerable a lapse of time : it is either already 
forgotten or has achieved its success sooner. Where the 
secret sciences are concerned, the case might be reasonably 
different, but second editions of books upon this subject are 
only seldom in demand, more especially when the original 
impression was so considerable as that of “ The Mysteries of 
Magic.” In any case, I have welcomed the opportunity to 
make a thorough revision of the undertaking, as well as some 
important additions both from the primary and posthumous 
publications of the French magus. The index, though it does 
not pretend to be exhaustive, is also a fresh feature, which 
will be useful to students, and the notes have been much, 
though not needlessly, extended. As regards the personal 
history of ^liphas Levi, it is to be regretted that our know¬ 
ledge has not been definitely extended since 1886. A full 
biography has been indeed promised us in France, where, for 
some years past, M. Lucien Mauchel has been engaged in the 
collection of the necessary facts and documents. In the 
meantime, the private correspondence of Levi addressed to 
Baron Spedalieri, a venerable occultist still living at Marseilles, 
having been spread in a desultory manner over many volumes 
of the theosophical magazine Lucifer , is now on the eve of 


XI 


Xll 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


publication in a large volume, representing ten or more years 
in the life of the author. Such indications as it is possible to 
derive therefrom, and the scanty supplementary information 
which the devotion of some French disciples has contrived to 
bring forward, are included in the revised biographical 
sketch. 

Personal acquaintance apart, the knowledge of £liphas 
Levi and the sphere of his influence have increased very 
widely since “The Mysteries of Magic” first made the 
brilliant transcendentalist known to English readers, and 
keeping in view that the advance in question has taken place 
as much outside as within his own country, and especially in 
England and America, it is a satisfaction to think that this 
digest has presumably been one of the instruments. There is 
not any need to say that the period which has passed since its 
appearance has been eminently one of mystic re-awakening, 
which has found its expression in literature upon every side, 
but at the same time has been brought about by no one 
school of transcendental thought, nor does it stand or fall by 
one. To all schools indifferently, £liphas Levi has, however, 
been a source of inspiration, nor has his influence been merely 
of a literary character; there seems evidence to shew that his 
presentation of magical science has been the basis of operation 
in more than one school secretly or openly engaged in experi¬ 
ments of a practical nature. And were there anything which 
could be taken seriously in the two vast fuliginous volumes 
recently published by the so-called Dr Bataille, under the 
title"’ of Le Diable au XIX s Siec/e, it would be necessary to 
add that there is an alleged theurgic school, having its head¬ 
quarters at Charleston, U.S.A., and possessing ramifications 
in all parts of the world, for which the “ Doctrine and Ritual 
of Transcendent Magic” is at once a gospel and a key of 
operation. But recent researches undertaken by myself, and 
published elsewhere, have sufficiently unmasked the imposture 
just mentioned, and more extended allusion is unnecessary in 


PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION 


xiii 

this place. For the rest, the attempt to refer a great or wide¬ 
spread movement to a single originating centre is commonly 
inexact, but an individual may sometimes be taken as practi¬ 
cally representing such a centre, and it is in this sense that we 
may regard £liphas Levi as a visible head and source of 
modern transcendentalism. He is the most brilliant, the most 
original, the most fascinating interpreter of occult philosophy 
in the West, nor is the reason far to seek, for he is essentially 
the modern spirit turning to the sanctuaries of initiation and 
carrying all its search-lights for the exploration of those 
recesses. 

While dwelling upon the extended character of Eliphas 
Levi’s influence, it would be impossible to overlook the 
esoteric groups which have sprung up in France within recent 
years, for these, in a direct manner, may be regarded as 
deriving from the magus. I refer to the various schools of 
which Dr Encausse, better known under the pseudonym of 
Papus, is the most active representative, and Stanislaus de 
Guaita perhaps the most inspired expositor. Much of the 
literature which has been produced by these schools may be 
regarded as voluminous commentary upon Levi’s writings. 
The “ Elementary Treatise of Practical Magic,” by Dr 
Encausse, is the most obvious case in point, and the devo¬ 
tion which has produced such works has been otherwise 
signalized by the pious task of collecting Levi’s unpublished 
writings, a labour which is still in progress, and, from the 
announcements made recently, there seems scarcely any limit 
to the available material. 

The plan of the following digest has been substantially 
altered. I must confess that in its original form it did not 
meet with universal approbation; the codification was, indeed, 
regarded as a mistake by more than one member of the Kab- 
balistic school in England, nor possibly in its altered form will 
they pronounce it wholly satisfactory. I speak thus frankly 
that my readers may not subsequently consider themselves as 


XIV 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


deceived. The chief work of Eliphas Levi is divided into two 
parts, under the title of “The Doctrine and Ritual of Tran¬ 
scendent Magic,” and each of these is subdivided into twenty- 
two sections, corresponding to those twenty-two keys of the 
Tarot about which so much information is given in the course 
of the digest. Now, the Kabbalistic school considers that 
great light is cast upon the mysteries of magical interpretation 
by this mode of classifying, but it was impossible to follow it 
in a work designed to represent other and important writings 
of the same author. While I in no way deny that there is 
weight in this objection from the Kabbalistic standpoint, I 
submit that the great light mentioned exists mainly for those 
who are in possession of the true attribution of the Tarot keys, 
which attribution neither was nor could be given by Eliphas 
Levi in writing. The light is therefore for initiates, and not 
for the ordinary students, to whom obviously my undertaking 
appeals. Here the Kabbalists themselves will understand me 
best, and my work, furthermore, which I claim to have accom¬ 
plished conscientiously, serves mainly as an extended intro¬ 
duction or epitome for the use of students, and does not make 
void the utility of the originals, even though persons possess¬ 
ing the originals have, to my knowledge, parted with them 
upon obtaining the digest. The plan followed in the present 
edition is not therefore an impracticable Tarotic classification; 
in view of the additions and extensions, I have adopted the 
least pretentious and most readily intelligible grouping. The 
general object, to attain which has been in itself sufficiently 
arduous, is to give a harmony of Levi’s writings, an interpreta¬ 
tion and qualification of his earlier by his later works, to make 
also a philosophical and reasonable presentation of the historic • 
claim of magic from the standpoint of this modern adept; 
finally, to distinguish what is theoretically possible for the 
magician from what is expedient, what magic claims, and how 
its claims are to be understood. 

I incurred also some unpopularity for a time among extreme 


PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION 


xv 


occultists by tabulating a few of the discrepancies and re¬ 
tractations which occur in the writings of Eliphas L£vi, and are 
either typical of different stages in the growth of his singular 
mind, or difficulties wilfully created for the express purpose of 
misleading the profane. There were erudite persons quite 
ready to affirm, even in the face of the tabulation, that he had 
never been guilty of a contradiction, and to explain whatever 
was conflicting by a reference to various “ planes.” I did then 
and do still conclude that it was upon those planes where John 
Stuart Mill conceived that two and two might be five. And 
here I think that the matter may well rest. I am not aware 
that anyone disputes about it now ; it is rather generally ad¬ 
mitted by those who consider themselves in a position to 
adjudicate upon such matters, that Eliphas Levi was not a 
“full initiate,” a fact which might account naturally for his 
occasional deflections from the absolute of infallibility. 

Outside its subject-matter, there is much in the critical 
essay which immediately follows that I should have been now 
glad to have written differently, because it is crude and 
juvenile, but, being such, if allowed to remain at all, it is well 
to leave it substantially as it was first written. A few rectifica¬ 
tions and a few additions have been alone made, and it may 
be taken for what it is worth, classing among the imperfections 
and enthusiasms of a young man and an inexperienced writer. 
For precisely the same reason, I should not in any case have 
altered the general title of the digest, though it offends now 
by its sensational character; but I have, as a fact, no power 
to alter, for, in view of this second edition, the title has its 
value, and that interest is vested in the publishers. 

The work as it stands represents the “ Doctrine and Ritual 
of Transcendent Magic,” the non-historical portions of the 
“ History of Magic,” the substance of the “ Key to the Great 
Mysteries,” of “ Fables and Symbols,” of “ The Science of 
Spirits,” with some selections from the “Paradoxes of the 
Highest Science.” The last work has not been published in 


xvi THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 

the original, and our knowledge concerning it is confined to a 
translation issued in 1883 at Bombay, under the auspices of 
the Indian section of the Theosophical Society; it has been 
long out of print. Some indications, especially upon the 
philosophy of numbers, have also been obtained from an 
advance copy of the Letters to Baron Spedalieri, which the 
Theosophical Publishing Society has generously placed at my 
disposal. I have further made use of two posthumous publica¬ 
tions, “ The Book of Splendours ” and the “ Clavicles of 
Solomon.” The present digest may therefore be taken to 
represent the entire works of Eliphas Levi published here¬ 
unto, with the exception of the “ Ritual of the Sanctum 
Regnum,” recently edited and translated from a unique MS. 
by Dr Wynn Westcott. This is entirely unknown in France, 
and is here protected by copyright law. The further post¬ 
humous writings announced for publication are “ The Gospel 
of Science,” “ The Catechism of Peace,” and “ The Great 
Arcanum.” Other originals are said to be in the hands of 
Dr Encausse and M. Lucien Mauchel, while, in England, Dr 
Westcott possesses a work in three parts, respectively entitled 
“ The Hieratic Mystery,” “ The Royal Mystery,” and “ The 
Sacerdotal Mystery,” extending to four hundred folio pages, 
date 1868, and “The Book of the Sages,” a series of con¬ 
versations between Eliphas Levi, a cleric, a Jew, and a 
philosopher. 

A. E. W. 


November 1896. 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL 
ESSAY 


§ i. The Life of Alphonse Louis Constant. 

With a tardy but permanent reputation in the country of 
their origin and an increasing celebrity among the occultists 
of Europe and America, the elucidations of the Mysteries of 
Magic published under the pseudonym of Eliphas Levi Zahed, 
possess great authority without much being known of their 
author. Indeed, the materials for a biography of Alphonse 
Louis Constant are meagre and unsatisfactory in the extreme. 
As occasionally happens, the latest and fullest information, 
such as it is, comes from a hostile source, and from the pen 
of an unknown writer. M. Charles Chauliac, a friend, how¬ 
ever, of the well-known Pere de la Porte and also of Gougenot 
des Mousseaux, who in the third quarter of the present century 
obtained some notoriety as an exponent of diabolism in spirit 
manifestations, and published, says Eliphas Levi, des gros 
livres innombrables. Thirty years since, M. Chauliac was 
further, or claims to have been, an acquaintance of the magus 
himself, and though many of his statements must be received 
with extreme caution, he undoubtedly clears up certain confused 
points. 1 Alphonse Louis Constant was born in an obscure 
street of Paris; he was the son of a shoemaker in a small way 
of business, and apparently in meagre circumstances. The 
exact date of his birth I am unable to state, but it was at 

1 Revue Mensuelle . . . suite a la publication, Le Diable au XIX e Siecle, 
Sept. 1895. 


A 



2 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


or about the year 1810. 1 He was delicate in his childhood, 2 
and received no regular education, “but his aptitude for learn¬ 
ing and his avidity for picking up stray bits of knowledge 
were so great that at last the neighbours used to talk of him 
as “ the clever lad.” 3 This precocity introduced him to the 
notice of the Cure of his parish, who obtained him a gratui¬ 
tous education at the Seminary of Saint Sulpice, where he 
entered on his studies for the priesthood, and in addition to 
more than the common proficiency expected of an average 
ecclesiastic in the two classical languages of antiquity, he 
is said to have become “ a first-rate Hebrew scholar,” 
in which case, and during this probationary period, he 
laid the foundations for that Kabbalistic knowledge 4 which 
eventually led him through the darkest paths of esoteric 
inquiry to his bold attempt at the reconciliation of religion 
and science. Grave doubts on matters of religious belief 
presented themselves at an early period to his mind, but 
there is good reason to refer them to an acquaintance with 
Voltairean free-thought, which largely underlies his occult 
philosophy, and not to a juvenile initiation into the mys¬ 
teries of magical art. His friend and disciple, the once 
famous chiromancist Desbarrolles, speaks of his religious 
exaltations, and of those doubts and scruples which led him to 
relinquish the sacerdotal career when on the point of engaging 
himself definitely and irrevocably therein. Madame Gebhard, 
who, in the advancing years of his life, was another pupil and 
confidant of the magus, tells us a curious, and perhaps partly 
apocryphal, story in this connection :— 

“ Before his last vows were taken he was sent as a punish¬ 
ment to an old out-of-the-way monastery, it having been 
discovered that he had on several occasions, while preaching 
in some country villages, given expression to opinions which 
were not considered consistent with the Catholic faith. He 
was kept a prisoner in this monastery for some months. His 

1 Writing to Baron Spedalieri, his friend and pupil, in the montif 'pf 
January, 1862, he states that he was then fifty-two years of age. 

2 Desbarrolles, Mysteres de la Main. 

3 Theosophist, Jan. 1886. 

4 It has been objected, however, that his published writings do not 
exhibit a profound acquaintance with later Jewish literature. 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSA Y 3 


food was very scanty, consisting of little more than bread and 
water. He had a large room allotted to him on the ground 
floor; the roof was vaulted, bare cold stones formed the floor, 
and the furniture consisted of a pallet bed, one chair, and a 
table. 

“ This part of the monastery was said to be haunted, and 
he once related a very curious anecdote in connection with it. 
One night being in the dark (for he was not allowed a light), 
he heard sounds as if an immense number of people were 
marching across the end of the room; they seemed to come 
in at one door and go out at another, though in the day-time 
he had never found any second mode of ingress or egress. 

“After passing many agitated and unpleasant hours, he 
slept, and on awakening towards dawn saw the figure of a 
monk sitting by his side. He was startled, thinking it was a 
ghost, when the apparition said to him, ‘ Do not fear; I am 
not a denizen of the other world, but a real living man.’ This 
monk proved a good friend to him, for from that day he was 
better treated, received sufficient food, was given a smaller 
and more comfortable room, and had even books lent to him, 
and writing materials placed at his disposal.” 

Whatever may be otherwise thought of this narrative, the 
imprisonment of Louis Constant was not of a very rigorous 
kind; from the description of his original cell, it corresponded, 
except in the matter of size, to those which are in daily use 
among many monks of unblemished orthodoxy, and it is 
difficult to see how a young cleric who was only in minor 
orders could have been permitted to perambulate the country, 
preaching independently, in defiance of all the law and order 
so scrupulously observed in these matters by the whole of the 
Latin Church. 

That delightful little pastoral story, Le Sorcier de Meudon , 
which £liphas describes as a peu pres notre biographie , x ap¬ 
parently gives us an idealized picture of the writer’s monastic 
experiences. The Frere Lubin of that story is the young 
. phonse Louis Constant. Maitre Frangois Rabelais, le 
_>rere Medecin, personifies the occult sciences, and surely it is 
a device of no ordinary genius to embody the sublime wisdom 

1 Le Sorcier de Meudon, Preface, 


4 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


of the Magi, which supplies to all “the most efficacious 
consolations and the most salutary counsels,” in la personne 
sacree du joyeux cure de Meudon , that supreme “ magician of 
the gay science in a century of furious fanaticism and insane 
extravagance.” 

£liphas Levi has been frequently described by his enemies 
as “ an apostate priest.” With much reluctance I am forced 
to admit that he must have taken irrevocable vows. Since 
the first publication of this sketch, fresh evidence has 
come to light, which invalidates my original view. He was, 
however, a deacon only, and even from the standpoint of 
the Church, the subsequent renunciation of his pledges 
by marriage was less heinous than it would have been in 
the case of one who had received ordination in final orders. 
M. Chauliac observes: “ A scholar of Saint Sulpice, he had 
only attained the diaconate when his superiors, scandalized by 
the strange theories which he supported with all the power 
of his keen intelligence, expelled him suddenly from the. 
seminary.” In any case, he returned to the world. As in 
so many candidates for the Catholic priesthood, the scrupulous 
conscience to which Desbarrolles refers did not, in all pro¬ 
bability, less interfere with his vocation than his intellectual 
difficulties. His estrangement from the sacerdotal career was 
followed by his conversion to the doctrines of Ganneau, who, 
under the name of Mahpah, 1 attempted about this time—it 
was the year 1839—to establish the religion of the New 
Alliance, which appears to have been an off-shoot of the 
curious sect—part thaumaturgic, part religious, but with a 
distinctly political complexion—once known as the Saviours 
of Louis XVII. The young enthusiast is said to have become 
a chief of the movement, and one result of his transitory con¬ 
victions was a book called the “ Bible of Liberty,” which, on 
account of its socialistic tendencies, ended in his imprisonment 
for a period of six months. “ The People’s Gospel,” a second 
and similar work, belongs to the same epoch. Both were 
probably small pamphlets, and are now entirely introuvable. 

By no means discouraged at the reverse which he had 
suffered at the hands of the law, Constant was no sooner at 


1 Formed of the first syllables of the Latin words Mater and Pater , 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSA V 5 


liberty than he betook himself to the provinces as an apostle 
of the new faith ; he is said to have changed his name, to 
have spread a report of his death, and to have reappeared as 
the Abbe Diraucourt, under which title he presented himself 
to the Bishop of Evreux, officiated as priest in his diocese, 
though he was only a deacon, preached with great success in 
the cathedral, but was unmasked by the procureur-general , 
Partarieux Lafosse, who had sentenced him to imprisonment, 
and, being at once driven out by the bishop, he returned to 
Paris. This story rests only on the authority of M. Chauliac, 
and I believe it to be fictitious. In his after life Constant 
never concealed his identity, even in his pseudonymous works, 
nor does he appear to have been on bad terms with his 
ecclesiastical superiors, for in the year 1850 I find him con¬ 
tributing to the great series of cheap theological encyclopaedias 
published by Abbe Migne, a voluminous “ Dictionary of 
Christian Literature,” which is a perfectly orthodox work, 
though it avoids dangerous and debatable subjects. His 
conversion to the doctrines of the New Alliance, his imprison¬ 
ment, and his apostleship are, however, acknowledged by 
himself. 1 

His return to Paris was followed shortly after by a runaway 
marriage with “ a beautiful girl of sixteen,” who is the ex¬ 
quisitely sketched Madeline, la gentille et blonde petite jou- 
venfelle of thex“ Sorcerer of Meudon.” The parents of the 
young lady, who had originally refused their consent, are 
represented by Madame Gebhard as having been reconciled 
at length to the match. It is, however, improbable that their 
assent was accorded, for the union was illegal in France, and, 
as a fact, it was subsequently made void by the tribunals at the 
suit of the lady herself. For the marriage was unfortunately 
not a happy one; they lost their two children at an early age; 
and one morning Constant woke up to find that his wife had 
left him for ever. According to a friendly account, the deserted 
magus betook himself to books, and gave himself up altogether 
to the occult sciences. M. Chauliac, on the other hand, 
depicts him as invoking the devil in order to procure her 
return. 

1 Histoire de la Magie , Bk. vii., c. 5 ; La Clef des Grands Mystires, 

P- 313- 


6 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


This tragical finale to a hasty and ill-considered match is 
also commemorated in the novel to which I have referred. 
Frere Lubin is rewarded for the infidelity of his wife by the 
inspiration of the poet, and this gift of song again typifies the 
occult sciences under a new aspect, for the power of the 
magus is wholly in his discernment of the natural analogies 
between God, man, and the universe, as was divined by 
Saint-Martin, the disciple of Martines de Pasqually, in his 
mystical Tableau . 6liphas Levi possessed, moreover, in an 
eminent degree, the two-fold endowment which we find in 
great poets, namely, profound knowledge of the human heart 
and keen insight, with the power of discerning correspondences 
which is a part of poetical insight. 

After this definite desertion of her husband, Madame Con¬ 
stant (nee Mile. Noemi) supported herself by sculpture. She 
was not only very handsome, but extremely talented; and she 
exhibited at the salon several busts, which brought her con¬ 
siderable reputation, under the name of Madame Claude de 
Vignon. Some time after the Franco-German war, she is said 
to have married a certain Monsieur Ronere, who was at that 
period a member of the French Parliament. Of her history 
subsequent to this event I can find no information. 

A divinatory calculation in the Dogme de la Haute Magie 
throws a vague glimmer of light on some epochs in the life of 
the author. 

“ In 1825 family life came to an end for me, and I was de¬ 
finitely engaged in a fateful path which conducted me to 
knowledge and misfortune. In 1843 I travelled as a pioneer, 
addressing the common people, and persecuted by ill-inten¬ 
tioned individuals, — in a word, I was honoured and pro¬ 
scribed. 1 In 1847 I was violently separated from my family, 
and great sufferings for mine and me resulted from this disrup¬ 
tion. In 1851 I had employment which was moderately 
but sufficiently remunerative, with some embarrassment of 
position.” 

To this period must be referred the statement contained in 
the following paragraph by M. Chauliac“ The Abbe Con- 

1 This is the apostolic propaganda in the matter of the gospel of 
Ganneau. 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSA Y 7 


stant, 1 for a second time repudiating his name, assumed the 
title of the Magus Eliphas Levi, giving consultations in great 
number to credulous clients, who paid as much as twenty-five 
francs a time for a prediction from Lucifer.” That Levi was 
open to consultation appears from the preface to his Fables et 
Symbols , 2 and, of course, M. Chauliac, as a true son of the 
Church, would perceive the intervention of Satan. 

In 1853 Eliphas Levi repaired to London, where his reputa¬ 
tion as an occultist had preceded him, and there he performed 
his celebrated ceremonial evocation of Apollonius of Tyana. 3 
Some passages in the writings of Eliphas Levi suggest that he 
made the acquaintance of the late Lord Lytton, and the abso¬ 
lute identity between the mysterious vril of “The Coming 
Race ” and the universal force of the Astral Light, is conclusive 
as to the great novelist’s acquaintance with the works of his 
Kabbalistic contemporary. I, therefore, addressed an inquiry 
to the late Earl of Lytton, and I am indebted to his courtesy 
for the information which follows:—It is almost certain that 
the author of Zanoni was personally acquainted with Alphonse 
Louis Constant, of whose works there is a copy at Knebworth, 
presented, it is thought, by the writer. The Earl of Lytton 
was under the impression that Eliphas Levi made the ac¬ 
quaintance of his father either at Paris or Nice. Among 
the papers at Knebworth there is a letter from Levi on the 
existence of a universal force, and the requisite conditions of 
its employment for the evocation of spiritual visions and 
presences. The letter is only dated “ Sunday, 10 April,” the 
year being wanting, and from the style it would appear to be 
addressed either to a stranger or to a very distant acquaint¬ 
ance. 

1 The title of Abbe is used loosely to designate any person wearing a 

clerical garb. It does not necessarily signify a priest, still less the superior 
of an abbey. . 

2 “ As regards our lessons—I have no manuscript course—I give to my 
disciples according to the need of their minds what the spirit gives me for 
them. I demand nothing, and I refuse nothing from them in return. It 
is a communion and an exchange of bread ; spiritual for bodily. But the 
needs of the body are of so little account for me that the generous gifts of 
those of my children who are rich serve mainly to satisfy the first and 
greatest need of my soul and of all our souls : Charity. Unpublished 
Letters of Eliphas L&vi, p. 3 . 

3 See “ Thaumaturgical Experiences,” Sect. I. 


8 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


The first Lord Lytton is evidently indicated in the account 
of the evocation of Apollonius under the initials Sir B. L. 
I may now add that the letter quoted above makes mention of 
an evocation of elementary spirits performed on the top of 
the London Pantheon, and at which the author of “ Zanoni ” 
assisted. 

The “ Dictionary of Christian Literature ** was published, as 
already seen, in 1850. In addition to the “ Bible of Liberty ” 
and the “People’s Gospel,” it had been preceded by some 
obscure efforts, poorly printed and in pamphlet form :— 

“The Last Incarnation : Gospel Legends of the Nineteenth Century.” 
By A. Constant. 60 centimes. Paris : a la Librairie Societaire, rue de 
Seine, 10. 1846.—Attributed to A. Constant of Geneva, this work was 

translated from a copy which the owner supposed to be unique, and was 
published at Springfield, Ill., U.S.A. Some legends of “The Last 
Incarnation” were subsequently embodied in La Science des Esprits. 

Rabelais a la Basmettre. By A. Constant. 1 franc. Paris : Librairie 
Phalansterienne. 1847. 

Le Seigneur de la Diviniere. Deuxihne Extrait des Chroniques du 
Joyeux Curd de Meudon. By A. Constant. 50 centimes. Paris : Lib. 
Phalansterienne. 1847. 

•.•These two works substantially reappeared as “The Sorcerer of 
Meudon.” 

Les Trois Malfaiteurs , Ldgende Orientate. By A. Constant. 30 
centimes. Paris : Librairie Phalansterienne. 1847. 

The first distinct contribution to occult science from the 
pen of Alphonse Louis Constant was the Dogme de la Haute 
Magie, published under the pseudonym of Eliphas Levi, which 
he invariably used thenceforward, in 1854. The Rituel de la 
Haute Magie followed in 1856. These volumes set their 
author at once in the foremost rank of transcendentalists. 
The Histoire de la Magie appeared in i860, a work written on 
a philosophical plan, but manifesting already a wide divergence 
in the views of its author. In 1861 came a second edition of 
the Dogme et Rituel , with a long prefatory dissertation embody¬ 
ing the later opinions just referred to, and scarcely consonant 
with the work to which it was prefixed. La Clef des Grands 
My stires was published in the same year, in which also the 
admirers of Eliphas Levi were delighted by the appearance of 
the Sorcier de Meudon. In 1862 the first series of the Philo- 
sophie Occulte was issued under the title of Fables et Symboles, 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSA Y 9 

and consisted of poetical apologues, containing rather more of 
the gold of wisdom than is generally to be met with in the ore 
of the fabulists, together with an occult and philosophical 
commentary which is full of the keen insight and characteristic 
ingenuity of its author. The second series followed in 1865 ; 
this was La Science des Esprits , a defence of the symbolical 
spirit of the Christian gospel against the spirits of table-rapping, 
for, as Madame Gebhard tells us, Eliphas Levi had “ a horror 
of Spiritualism, and used to say that mediums and spiritualists 
were like children playing with lighted matches near a barrel 
of powder, which any moment might explode and destroy 
them.” His horror, however, was exaggerated, and originated, 
partially at any rate, in the indignation of an initiated thau¬ 
maturge at such a general invasion of the realm of prodigies 
by the profanum vulgus of unqualified investigators. The 
physical and moral deterioration accompanying the indis¬ 
criminate use of mediumistic gifts was, however, in itself a 
justification for the author’s denunciations, and La Science des 
Esprits will take rank among the most interesting of his pro¬ 
ductions. It was followed by a silence of ten years, and in 
the month of April 1875 the gifted spirit of Alphonse Louis 
Constant passed to the next stage of its eternal progress. 

Some years before his death, the magus, if we may believe 
M. Chauliac, renounced his magical errors and re-entered the 
fold of the Church. He lived afterwards in strict retreat, 
devoted to acts of reparation and penitence. When he died, 
he was fortified with all the rites of the Church. Students of 
Eliphas Levi’s later works will understand accurately enough 
the kind of conversion which he underwent; they will infer 
that in reality he renounced nothing and accepted nothing, 
but as in his Hermetic writings, so in his private life he did not 
become but remained a subject of the prevailing religious order. 

We are indebted to Madame Gebhard for the following 
portraiture of her revered teacher:—“ He was of a short and 
corpulent figure; his face was kind and benevolent, beaming 
with good nature, and he wore a long grey beard which covered 
nearly the whole of his breast. 1 His apartment resembled a 

1 “Vested invariably when at home in a long red robe, with his long 
white beard and bald head, he recalled, somewhat confusedly, the astro¬ 
logers of the Middle Ages.”— M. Chauliac. 


IO 


THE MYSTERIES OE MAGIC 


bric-a-brac shop, with specimens of the most beautiful and rare 
old china, tapestry, and valuable paintings. In one of the 
rooms there was an alcove in which stood a bed covered with 
a gorgeous quilt of red velvet heavily embroidered with gold; 
the curtains were also of red velvet bordered with massive 
gold fringe, and a red velvet step stood before this magnificent 
couch, having a soft cushion also of red and gold laid on the 
top of it. . . . He lived a quiet and retired life, having few 
friends. . . . His habits . . . were simple, but he was no 
vegetarian. ... He had a wonderful memory, and a mar¬ 
vellous flow of language, his expressions and illustrations 
being of the choicest and rarest character. . . . Never,” says 
this lady, in her interesting but too brief narrative, “ did I leave 
his presence without feeling that my own nature had been 
uplifted to nobler and better things, and I look upon Eliphas 
Levi as one of the truest friends I ever had, for he taught me 
the highest truth which it is in the power of man or woman 
to grasp.” 

The hand of Eliphas Levi was engraved by Desbarrolles 
in his Mysteres de la Main ; it has the highest psychical 
and philosophical peculiarities; it indicates “ irresistible 
attractions towards sensual gratifications followed immedi¬ 
ately by aspirations towards ascetical life ”—pride and the 
most complete indifference alternately ruling his behaviour 
—“and that fatality which, through all his days, impelled 
him towards the secret sciences, for which he was created, 
and of which he bears all the signs, by successively depriving 
him of whatever could attach him to actual life, and in the 
end of his most cherished affections.” 


§ 2. Notes on the Mysteries of Magic as Expounded 
in the Occult Philosophy of Eliphas L£vi. 

The works of Eliphas Levi fall naturally into three divisions. 
There is, firstly, all which preceded the “Dictionary of 
Christian Literature,” including that work. The second 
place is occupied only by the “Doctrine and Ritual of 
Transcendent Magic.” The third group embraces all sub¬ 
sequent publications, the “Sorcerer of Meudon,” in so far as 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSA Y 


II 


it is reprinted matter, belonging, however, to the first class. 
Now, the first period represents no occult knowledge, and is 
memorable only for a certain literary beauty, that beau style , 
which Levi poetically describes as a nimbus of sanctity. Be¬ 
tween the “ Doctrine and Ritual ” and the subsequent publica¬ 
tions there are marked and remarkable differences which make 
the second and third divisions almost mutually exclusive, 
and ^ it is important to know whether the later instruction 
of Eliphas Levi represents a maturer stage of his mental 
development, or whether it was governed by considerations 
which the student can afford to set aside. The conclusion 
which I offer to my readers as the result of long and serious 
consideration is that there is much in the “ Doctrine and 
Ritual of Transcendent Magic ” which calls for modification, 
and may be profitably modified by reference to the later 
writings; that these, on the whole, present a more clear 
and sober view of occult philosophy, as understood by the 
French magus, but that they also require to be checked not 
only by one another, but by comparison with the “ Doctrine 
and Ritual.” From one point of view, the present digest 
is an elaborate attempt to establish the middle ground or 
harmony of Levi’s occult writings. I venture to regard the 
result as measurably successful, though it has been impossible 
from the nature of the case to bring all parts into exact 
and minute agreement. 

In the Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, Eliphas Levi 
claims to be in possession of a secret which has once, at 
least, revolutionized the world; he claims to have dis¬ 
covered a force by which all miracles divine and diabolical 
have been, and may still be, performed; to possess the key 
of prophecies; to have traced the exoteric doctrines of all 
theologies to one primal and universal dogma. He has 
recovered the claviculae of Solomon, and has “ opened with¬ 
out difficulty every door of the ancient sanctuaries where 
absolute truth seemed to slumber; ” he has unravelled the 
transcendent secrets which mediaeval adepts concealed 
under such more or less equivocal expressions as the Magnum 
Opus , the philosopher’s stone, the quadrature of the circle, 
the universal medicine, and the transmutation of metals. 
He has discovered, in fine, “the secret of human omnipo- 


12 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


tence and of indefinite progression ”—he is, in one word, the 
master of the absolute. 

Now, in attempting to estimate the value of this gigantic 
claim, and of Eliphas Levi’s contributions to the elucidation 
of occult science, we are brought face to face with the fact, 
that after posing as an initiate in possession of the Great 
Arcanum, he has done his best to stultify himself by attempting 
to pose also as a faithful and humble child of the Catholic 
Church, and this without abandoning his previous position. 
Such a course has naturally led him into grave and numerous 
contradictions, which cannot but scandalize his students in 
proportion to their personal earnestness, and are calculated to 
make many reject his claims to secret knowledge as utterly 
unfounded. 

We must not, however, be misled by appearances; the 
subtlety of human intellect delights in the attempt to establish 
a harmony between things which are essentially opposite and 
a division between things which are similar. Moreover, the 
discoveries of science are unaffected by the recantations of 
any Galileo. I shall, therefore, begin boldly by stating the 
inconsistencies of Eliphas Levi, to ascertain how far they 
really modify his claims; I shall next consider those claims, 
and afterwards briefly define what appears to me the nature 
of his true greatness. 

The Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie establishes, or seeks 
to establish, the following points with regard to religious 
belief:— 

1. The domain of faith is the infinity of the unknown. 

2. The express definition of anything which we may 
believe to exist in this domain is the formulation of the un¬ 
known, and, of course, is absurdity. 

3. The laws of human reason should control the imagina¬ 
tion in its excursions into the domain of the unknown. 

4. All our conceptions concerning this region must be 
characterized by an exalted vagueness. 

5. God is an explanatory hypothesis of the human mind— 
an aggrandized conception of himself which man sets on the 
throne of infinity. 

6. There is an underlying principle in all so-called revela¬ 
tions, and this principle is the doctrine of analogy—viz., that 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAY 13 


there is a correspondence between things seen and things 
unseen ; earth is the shadow of heaven, man a reflection of 
divinity, a spiritual sun corresponds to the physical sun, &c. 

7. The reasonable religion which results from this doctrine, 
and constitutes the only indefectible Catholic faith, is unsuited 
to the multitude, for whom fables and nurse-tales are necessary. 

8. Therefore the secrets of Nature are dressed up by means 
of allegory in the guise of dogmas, and are presented to the 
multitude as working substitutes for truths which are danger¬ 
ous to the profane. 

9. The doctrine of analogy is the basis of magic, which is 
the only formidable enemy of hierarchic religions, because, by 
revealing the allegories of dogmas, it makes these le mensonge 
de la verite et la v'erite du mensonge , and thus utterly destroys 
that claim of absolute truth which every religion makes in 
regard to its doctrines. Every religion, therefore, condemns 
magic. 

10. The initiate knows the significance of all symbolism 
and all forms of worship, and he may practise or abstain from 
them without compromising sincerity or good faith. 1 

It is plain that this teaching aims a death-blow at exoteric 
theologies; it reduces all their doctrines, small and great, to 
the same level as the puppets of the Pilgrim’s Progress. They 
are “shows that shew.” Now, the life of theological faith is 
in the assumption of the absolute, as opposed to the symboli¬ 
cal, truth of its dogmas. It follows also from the philosophy 
of the Dogme et Rituel: 

1. That no intelligence from the unseen world has ever 
come down among men to make known the mysteries of the 
unseen world. 

2. That no God has ever really become incarnate in 
humanity to prove God more than a reasonable hypothesis, 

1 “ He (the initiate) knows the reason of all symbolism and all forms 
of worship ; he dares to practise or abstain from them without hypocrisy 
or impiety, and he is silent on the one dogma of supreme initiation.”— 
Dogme , p. 219. The same point is restated with slight modifications in 
an undated letter addressed to Mon. Montant : “ An initiate may simply 
and sincerely practise the religion in which he is born, for all rites 
diversely represent one and the same dogma, but the depth of his 
conscience should be bared to God alone, and he is responsible to no one 
for his private beliefs.”— Livre des Splendeurs , p. 261. 


14 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


or that man has been created after God’s image and not God 
after the likeness of humanity. 

3. That no church possesses, or has ever possessed, a direct 
mission from above to teach and define truths concerning the 
eternal world. 

4. That it is legitimate for one who is initiated into the 
secret of the transfiguration of dogmas, that is, the evolution 
of all theologies from the one assumption of pseudo-Hermes, 
to revolutionize heaven and earth by the creation of a new 
dogmatic symbolism, provided the moment be opportune. 

Now, what should be the position of such a thinker towards 
the hierarchic religion of his country, towards the dominant 
orthodoxy of the moment ? In the eleventh chapter of the 
Dogme de la Haute Magie the writer describes himself as a 
savant pauvre et obscur who has recovered Archimedes’ lever 
and offers it gratuitously to those who by their exalted social 
position will be able to use it effectually. “ This knowledge 
has come to me too late for myself, and I have lost in its 
acquisition the time and resources which might have enabled 
me to make use of it.” That is to say, 6liphas Levi cannot 
himself accomplish another divine revolution in the world ; he 
is devoid of an adequate initiative for the propaganda of a 
loftier symbolism; very properly, therefore, he refrains from 
devising small insurrections or futile departures in sectarianism. 
He cannot, in a word, be St Paul, and he declines to be Simon 
Magus. He publishes his books that he may, if possible, 
make new priests and new kings for the Regnum Dei of the 
age to come, but personally, and in his private character, he 
“sfomits to the reigning religion, and its dogmas he, moreover, 
considers to be the most perfect allegorical drapery which has 
yet been woven round the secrets of Nature. 

This is perfectly intelligible, and, given the standpoint of the 
writer, cannot reasonably raise an objection. But though an 
individual does right in conforming to the constitution of his 
country despite its imperfections, and does not thereby com¬ 
promise his sincerity, however transparent such imperfections 
may be to him, yet if in gratuitously undertaking to champion 
the cause of that constitution, he should obstinately shut his 
eyes to its shortcomings, and even endeavour to hide them, he 
would undoubtedly place himself in an equivocal position, disin- 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAY 15 


terested though his motives might be. We should not, there¬ 
fore, expect £liphas Levi, who has openly proclaimed the 
common disabilities of all exoteric theologies, whose books are 
of a most revolutionary character, who undertakes to put into 
the hands of his readers a key to every religious symbol, so 
that they can worship anywhere with equal sincerity or refrain 
from any form of worship without impiety, we should not 
expect him to come forward as the uncompromising champion 
of a special form of dogmatism, bent, at the risk of all kinds of 
self-contradiction, on re-establishing what he has previously 
demolished. This, however, is actually the case. The 
results of the Dogme et Rituel being such as I have stated, he 
becomes in his subsequent works the declared champion of 
the Roman orthodoxy, endeavouring to unsay what he has 
said against her, yet without confessing that he has changed 
his views, and without any apparent consciousness of his 
fundamental discrepancies, some of which I shall now lay 
before the reader to substantiate my statements. I am forced 
to select those which present a sharp contrast, but no quota¬ 
tions, and no contrasts of a verbal kind, can give an adequate 
idea of the writer’s radical change of front. 


The Latin Church and Demonology. 


“The Church, in her exorcisms, 
has consecrated the belief in all 
these things (diabolical compacts, 
&c.), and we may say that black 
magic and its prince of darkness are 
a true, living, terrible creation of 
Roman Catholicism, that they are, 
in fact, its special and characteristic 
work, for priests do not invent God. 
Moreover, true Catholics cling from 
the bottom of their hearts to the 
preservation and regeneration even 
of this magnum opus , which is the 
philosophers’ stone of the official 
and positive cultus,”— Rituel , p. 
233 - 


The Histoire de la Magie, on the 
contrary, describes the Church as 
most reserved on the subject of 
Satan, and admires this reservation 
(p. 196). Good Christians do not 
even name him, and religious 
moralists recommend the faithful 
not to think about him, but to 
direct their minds to God. Instead 
of representing the Church as 
answerable for the creation of the 
mediaeval Satan, he refers the im¬ 
portance assumed by this phantom 
to the penchant of diseased imagina¬ 
tions and weak heads for things 
monstrous and horrible (p. 290). 
Finally, instead of representing 
black magic as the creation of the 
Roman Church, the Histoire repre¬ 
sents it as the work of sectarians 
and (fissidents, 


i6 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Papal Infallibility and the Kabbalistic Keys. 


“ The Gnostic revelations have 
separated the Church from the 
supreme truths of the Kabbalah, 
which contains all the secrets of 
transcendental theology. Thus the 
blind have become leaders of the 
blind, and great obscurities, great 
lapses, and deplorable scandals 
have resulted ; afterwards the sacred 
books, of which the keys are entirely 
Kabbalistic, from Genesis to the 
Apocalypse, have become so unin¬ 
telligible to Christians that their 
pastors have rightly judged it need¬ 
ful to forbid their perusal to simple 
believers.”— Rituel^ p. 143. 

Comment here is hardly needed. It is preposterous to 
accredit blind leaders with infallibility; if they be infallible, 
they are not blind. Notice, also, that the loss of the Kabba¬ 
listic Keys, according to the Rituel, not only makes Ezekiel 
and the Apocalypse unintelligible, but also the whole Bible. 


“ The loss of the Kabbalistic 
Keys could not involve that of the 
infallibility of the Church, ever 
assisted by the Holy Spirit, but it 
has caused great obscurities in 
exegesis, and has made the majestic 
images of Ezekiel's prophecy and 
St John’s Apocalypse completely 
unintelligible.”— Histoire, p. 222. 


Connection of Pagan 

On p. 16 of the Rituel we are 
assured that Christian symbolism 
was created from the debris of all 
worships which had been overcome 
by the “ queen of the world ”— 
that is, by Rome. 


St Paul and 
“The successive phases of fanati¬ 
cism have almost brought men to 
despair of scientific or religious 
rationality. * St Paul burned the 
books of Trismegistus; Omar 
burned the disciples of Trisme¬ 
gistus and St Paul. O persecutors ! 
O incendiaries ! O scoffers ! when 
will ye finish your work of darkness 
and destruction ? "—Rituel , p. 327. 


and Christian Symbolism. 

In the Histoire , on the contrary, 
we are told that it is wrong 
to accuse Christianity of having 
borrowed what was most beautiful 
in the old worships. ‘ ‘ Christianity 
—last form of universal orthodoxy 
—has preserved all that belonged 
to her, and has rejected nothing but 
dangerous observances and futile 
superstitions” (p. 159). 

Magical Books. 

“We read in the Acts of the 
Apostles, that St Paul collected at 
Ephesus all the works which treated 
of ‘ curious arts ’ and burned them 
publicly. Doubtless the goetic or 
necromantic works of the ancients 
are referred to here. The loss is 
much to be regretted, for even from 
the monuments of error gleams of 
truth and scientifically valuable 
information may be frequently 
obtained.”— Histoire , p. 181, 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAY 17 


What is remarkable here is the suggestive toning down; 
instead of the fanaticism, persecution, and incendiarism of a 
frantic iconoclast, who is accredited with destroying the 
sublwie works of Hermes, we have a mild invitation to regret 
the loss of some books on black magic. £liphas Levi had 
not, however, made his last remarks on this subject; it 
seemed good to him that previous discrepancies should be 
further accentuated. “ Was St Paul a barbarian ? Did he 
commit outrage on science when he burned the books of the 
hierophants ? No; he consumed the winding-sheets that 
death might be forgotten ” (La Clef des Grands Mysteres, 
p. 79). Therefore, fanaticism, persecution, and arson do not 
constitute barbarism, and the works of the hierophants, the 
works of “ thrice-great ” Hermes, are the cerements of the 
sepulchre ! And this is from a writer who tells us that “ the 
supreme and absolute science is magic ” ! 


Christianity and Neoplatonism. 


On p. 65 of the Dogme, the 
author speaks of positive Chris¬ 
tianity at length triumphing over 
the sublime dreams and gigantic 
aspirations of the Alexandrian 
school, and daring publicly to ful¬ 
minate its anathemas against this 
philosophy. 


Biblical 

“ Let us start by declaring that 
we believe in all miracles, because 
we are convinced and certain, even 
by our own experience, of their 
complete possibility. There are 
some which we do not attempt to 
explain , though we consider them 
10 be none the less explicable. From 
the greater to the lesser, from the 
lesser to the greater, the conse¬ 
quences are identically connected 
and the proportions progressively 
rigorous” ( Rituel , p. 33). That 


The Histoire , while acknowledg¬ 
ing that the school of Plato diffused 
a great light in Alexandria, says 
that “Christianity, after three cen¬ 
turies of struggle, had assimilated 
all that was true and durable in the 
doctrines of antiquity” (p. 223). 
What is noticeable here is the com¬ 
plete change of attitude ; instead of 
the audacity of fledgling faith we 
have the lawful appropriation of 
hardly-won spoils. 

Miracles. 

“ We entirely disclaim any notion 
of attributing to magic the miracles 
of this man (Moses), inspired by 
God ” ( Histoire , p. 83). Here the 
contradiction is complete and irre¬ 
trievable ; but even were there no 
contradiction, what are we to think 
of a writer who, on p. 327 of the 
Rituel de la Haute Magie , informs 
us that by the use of the treatise of 
Trithemius— De Septem Secundeis 
—one may easily surpass the pre¬ 
vision of Isaiah or Jeremiah, yet 


B 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


18 


the Biblical miracles are referred to 
in the passage I have italicized is, 
of course, evident, but ihiphas Levi 
does subsequently explain them. 
“When Moses struck the rock, he 
did not create a source of water; 
he revealed it to the people, occult 
science having previously made it 
known to himself by means of the 
divining-rod” [Dogme, p. 181)—- 
that is, by an instrument of diaboli¬ 
cal magic from the standpoint of 
accredited Catholic theologians. 


would see the intervention of Deity 
to assist in the production of para¬ 
sitic insects? Little, however, is 
the dependence to be placed on 
what is said in either case, for in 
his very next book —La Clef des 
Grands My stores, p. 214—we find 
the author attributing the same 
Mosaic prodigies to science and 
address—by implication, it is true. 
He also explains why the magicians 
of Pharaoh cried “ Miracle ! *’ when 
they were beaten, namely, that it 
is more soothing to the vanity of a 
charlatan to consider himself over¬ 
come by the intervention of super¬ 
mundane power than by the superior 
chicanery of a confrere. Finally, the 
“ Histoire de la Magie ” declares to 
us that Moses and the magicians 
of Pharaoh both made use of one 
instrument in the performance of 
their prodigies, and that this instru¬ 
ment was the Great Magical Agent 
of the Astral Light. Therefore the 
miracles of Moses are to be explained 
by magic since they are explained 
by the magical hypothesis of the 
Astral Light. ( Histoire , pp. 19, 
20.) 


The most glaring contradiction which Eliphas Levi’s new 
views on matters of belief have occasioned, is the last of its 
kind which I shall cite, though quotations might be continued 
much further. 

Immortality. 


“One of the great benefits of 
magnetism is that it renders evident, 
by incontestable facts, the spiritu¬ 
ality, unity, and immortality of the 
soul. Spirituality, unity, and im¬ 
mortality once proved, God would 
be manifested to all intelligences 
and all hearts.”— Histoire , p. 22. 


“The immortality of the soul, 
being one of the most consoling 
dogmas of religion, must be re¬ 
served for the aspirations of faith, 
and will consequently never be 
proved by facts accessible to the 
criticism of science.” — Histoire, 
P. 529. 


Immortality is proved by incontestable facts, says the one 
passage; it can never be proved by facts, says the other. 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAY 19 

This is the universal science ! This, too, between the covers 
of the same book—ludicrous instance of an obstinate deter¬ 
mination to sit at the same time on the throne of science and 
the footstool of childlike faith in the decisions of the dominant 
sacerdotal orthodoxy! 

It is time, however, to ascertain what influence has been 
exercised by this singular change of views on Eliphas Levi’s 
previous estimation of the facts, theories, and possibilities of 
magical science, as this is the point which will more nearly 
concern the ordinary student of occultism. The author of 
the Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie comes before us as 
one speaking with authority on the existence of elementary 
spirits, fluidic phantoms, the survival of the astral body after 
the decease of the physical organism, and after the departure 
of the divine spirit; he comes before us as one who has 
personally practised white or permissible necromancy, as one 
who has evoked, seen, and touched, has beheld clearly and 
distinctly, an apparition in the Astral Light, and has thus 
proved the terrible efficacy of magical ceremonies. He comes 
before us as one who is in possession of “ the first book of 
humanity,” “the keystone of the whole edifice of occultism,” 
the inspiring instrument of all revelations, and “the most 
perfect method of divination,” one indeed which “may be 
employed with complete confidence.” This is the “ marvel¬ 
lous Tarot.” Let us briefly consider these claims in the light 
of his later books. 

La Science des Esprits tells us that angels and demons alike 
are purely hypothetical or legendary beings, which must be 
relegated to the domain of poetry, since they can never 
belong to that of science (p. 6). It also tells us that satyrs 
and ghouls, and three-headed monsters, and all the rest of 
the darksome phantasmagoria , are nightmares of madness ” 
(p. 3T4). The Histoire had already characterized the occult 
doctrine of fluidic phantoms as hypothesis (p. 114); it now 
appears as the hypothesis of insanity. The former distinction 
between white and black necromancy is entirely ignored, and 
the whole practice is bodily denounced as “ a crime against 
nature.” 1 The spiritists are told that their mediums evoke 


1 La Science des Esprits , p. 245. 


20 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


the dead, and that necromantic evocation is “ the blackest of 
the sciences of the abyss, the most accursed of sacrilegious 
operations.” 1 All that can be said is that Eliphas Levi 
himself committed this unnatural crime and frightful sacrilege, 
for no one can consider it permissible to perform what is 
detestable and accursed under the plea of scientific experi¬ 
ment It is the Tarot itself, to which he was indebted for all 
his science, which, however, fares the worst. That “ true key 
to the oratorical art and to the great art of Raymund Lully,” 
that “secret of the transmutation of darkness into light,” that 
“first and most important of all the arcana of the magnum 
opus? is declared to be an instrument which cannot be 
consulted without danger and without crime. 2 It is a 
method of divination, divination is a compact with vertigo, 
vertigo is falsehood, evil, and hell itself. 3 This is the 
instrument to which Eliphas Levi owes his universal science, 
this is “ the occult and sacred alphabet ” composed of ideas 
and numbers, and realizing the mathematics of thought. 4 
Again, in regard to the faculty of vision in the Astral Light, 
the Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie is extravagant in its 
praise of the lucidity of the supreme adept, and we are told 
that the Kabbalists who speak of the world of spirits “ have 
simply recounted what they have beheld in their evocations, 
visions, and intuitions in what they have denominated the 
light of glory! 5 La Science des E sprits, on the contrary, tells 
us that “ the things which are beyond this life may be con¬ 
jectured on in two manners, either by the calculations of 
analogy, or by the intuitions of extasis, in other words, by 
reason or madness. The sages of Judea chose reason, and 
have left us their magnificent hypotheses in books which are 
generally ignored.” 6 The falsehood, folly, and wickedness of 
all visionary exaltation of the imagination and mind of man is 
insisted on continually in the later books. And then in 
regard to the soul’s eternal destiny the contradictions are 
both numerous and notable; on this point, however, the 
Jewish Kabbalists seem to be as little in harmony with one 
another as ^Eliphas Levi is with himself. I have referred to 

1 La Science des Esprits , p. 299. 2 Histoire de la Magie , p. 466. 

3 La Science des Esprits, p. 298. 4 La Clef des Grands Mysteres, p. 3. 

6 Dogme , p. 260. 6 La Science des Esprits , p. 125. 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSA Y 2 


these contradictions in the Notes, so here I need only remark 
that whereas the Dogme et Rituel both direct us to conquer 
our individual immortality by achieving in the isolation of 
self-conquest, and by resisting and eradicating the propen¬ 
sities of Nature, a personal and imperishable life, the Histoire 
tells us that life is “ a universal communion,” and that it is in 
this communion that immortality is to be found. The isola¬ 
tion of self is death by self-condemnation, and an eternity of 
isolation would be eternal death. 1 

It is unnecessary to continue these contrasts; the discre¬ 
pancies of less importance are too numerous for tabulation, 
and as they arise, one and all, from the author’s change of 
front towards the Catholic religion, or else from his grotesque 
and sometimes comic detestation of modern spiritualism, my 
purpose is already served, and I shall conclude this portion 
of my subject by determining as far as possible the sincerity 
or otherwise of such a change. That it was dictated by no 
motive of personal gain or interest will be readily believed, 
but that it was sincere it would seem impossible to maintain, 
and the author himself, by one of those side-lights which 
he is in the habit of occasionally flashing on some of his 
paradoxical positions, 2 informs us that it is la haute con- 
venance which actuates him, and with ludicrous inconse¬ 
quence he contradicts his own submission to the decisions of 
the hierarchy by sowing broadcast through the books which 
contain them the most audacious contradictions of orthodox 
teaching on vital and fundamental questions of current religious 
belief. He says, “Be it well understood that our scientific 
revelations pause before faith, and that, as Christian and 
Catholic, we submit our work entirely to the supreme 
judgment of the church.” 3 Then he at once proceeds to 
discuss the personality of Satan. “All that has a name 
exists,” he says; of course, he means us to add, “ even if it 
be in name only.” “The devil,” he continues, “is named 
and personified in the Gospel, and he may, therefore, be 

1 Histoire de la Magie, p. 40. 

2 For instance, the statement that “ the ancient sanctuaries had their 
secrets which have not come down to us ” is a curious commentary on 
some of the same writer’s anterior claims. 

3 Histoire , p. 14. 


22 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


considered as a person.” This admission is due, however, to 
his complaisance as a Christian. “Let science speak, or 
reason, which is the same thing.” So science speaks, and 
does not hesitate to inform us that if such a personification 
must be taken seriously, the devil would be the most absolutely 
dead and deceived of all beings; in other words, “ the 
affirmation of his existence would imply an evident contra¬ 
diction.” The devil, however, is a blind force abused by 
malicious intelligence, and the Lucifer of the heterodox— 
read orthodox—legend is “a rash, monstrous, and impious 
conception.” Such is the commentary of reason on the per¬ 
sonifications of the Gospel; such is Eliphas Levi’s com¬ 
mentary on his own concessions to the ideal code of la haute 
convenance. 

Again, he informs us that “ every definition of God which 
is hazarded by human intelligence is a recipe of religious 
empiricism, by means of which superstition will sooner or 
later be able to fabricate a devil.” The assertion may be 
absolutely true in the overwhelming majority of instances, but 
does it not raise a smile when we consider the logical result of 
such a doctrine on the rage for theological definition which 
is a chief characteristic of the Roman Church ? The 
submissions of Eliphas Levi are, in fact, thoroughly dis¬ 
ingenuous, and how he could have imagined they would 
deceive any one—that is, any one worth deceiving—it is 
impossible to conjecture. He will never convince a reason¬ 
able man that it is necessary to believe in dogmas on the 
authority of Rome, when he has told us that all dogmas are 
the puppets of allegory, and that the key of their mystery is 
discoverable by any one who searches with sufficient diligence, 
and, of course, in the right direction. La haute convenance 
may keep us silent whenever it is expedient; it may even 
prompt us to perform the outward duties of “ the official 
cultus,” but it will not justify us in wilfully substituting the 
veil of symbolism for the truth it hides; it will not prevent us 
from speech in season, nor will it cause us to come forward 
as gratuitous champions of the evanescent orthodoxy of the 
moment. We are definitely assured, even in the later books, 
that religious dogma is merely a nurse-story, but “ provided 
that it is ingenious and morally beneficial, it is perfectly true 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSA Y 23 

for the child.” 1 Nothing, however, can be expected from 
grown men but a certain mild and kindly interest in the folk¬ 
tales of their childhood. They will not tell children that 
there are no such things as fairies, but it would be utterly 
preposterous to parade their absolute submission to the fables 
and saws of their grandmothers. It does not improve matters 
to tell us that orthodoxy in religion is respect for the hier¬ 
archy, 2 for this is a definition which the hierarchy would be 
certainly the first to reject. Orthodoxy in religion is absolute 
faith in the truth of hierarchic teaching. I may have a great 
respect for Mr Gladstone, without any faith in his foreign 
policy. Moreover, the veneration of Kabbalistic Illuminati 
and possessors of the universal science for the haute raison 
of “ blind leaders,” is a little paradoxical in sound, and is 
hardly more dignified in the one than it is complimentary 
to the other. If any of my readers be inclined to prefer 
the positivism of Latin dogma to the somewhat nebulous 
poetics of indefinite religious aspiration, there may be some¬ 
thing to applaud in that preference, and for one I should 
be indisposed to dissuade them, but let them ground their 
judgment on the involuntary apologists of the Abbe Migne, 
and not on the gratuitous defences of Eliphas Levi. He 
has told us to respect the Church in her old age, and with 
this we coincide cheerfully, but we do not feel called on to 
identify ourselves with that old age. The point missed 
throughout all the author’s arguments on the importance of 
the hierarchy in matters of religion is that authority may 
abdicate its right to rule. 3 On his own showing, a hierarchic 
cultus can become effete, and then may be rightly replaced. 4 
If Christian dogmas are to undergo a final transfiguration, as 
Eliphas Levi desires, this transfiguration will probably begin 
as a cultus illicitus , as Christianity itself began. It is equally 
erroneous to assert that articles of belief are not legitimate 
objects of discussion. 5 It is the duty of an intelligent Christian 
man, when he is invited to underwrite a new article of faith, 
to examine what is offered him, to compare it with the opinions 
of antiquity, with other doctrines which possess his previous 
adherence, and with his notions of God and Nature, unless 

1 Histoire , p. 31. 2 Histoire, p. 34. 

3 See e.g., Histoire , p. 136. 4 Ibid., p. 160. 5 Ibid., p. 183. 


24 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


from previous consideration he be absolutely convinced that 
the authority which propounds the novelty is wholly divine 
and infallible. Such a conviction is, of course, outside the 
pure rationalism of Eliphas Levi’s philosophy; his arguments 
in defence of the Church of his childhood are, therefore, bad 
as well as disingenuous; they originate in false notions of 
expediency, and in a kind of pseudo-chivalry which seems to 
have overtaken their author by fits and starts. 1 As it is 
difficult to believe that they could have deceived himself, we 
might be justified in concluding from the evidence in hand 
that Eliphas Levi’s description of the writings of the demon- 
ologist Bodin has a peculiar application to his own, and that, 
in fact, “ they are profoundly Machiavelian, and strike at the 
root of the institutions which they appear to defend.” He 
calls La Clef des Grands My sieves, which is full of these para¬ 
doxical submissions, “ a mystification or a monument; ” it is 
probably a monumental mystification. 

What would appear to be most genuine in the virtual 
retractations of Eliphas Levi are those which concern the 
occult sciences, and they are merely a natural revulsion from 
the transcendental charlatanry and poetic exaggeration of the 
Hogme et Rituel. Those volumes, the most suggestive and 
beautiful in their way which have ever been contributed to 
the elucidation of magical mysteries, are the product of an 
enthusiasm which beheld all the vistas of occultism through 
the rose-hued medium of a light which was certainly never on 
the land or sea of the known actualities of mysticism ; and 
the romantic assertions of the inspired visionary who produced 
them, in the ecstasy consequent on his supposed solution of 
all problems, scientific, philosophical, or religious, are suc¬ 
cessively though stealthily toned down as the true theosophical 
adept emerged into scientific realism from the wonder-world 
of the neophyte. 

Let it be once for all plainly understood before proceeding 
further that I do not accuse Eliphas Levi of wilful falsification 

1 “ If thy mother, the Church, be sleeping with disordered garments, 
cover her with thy mantle, walking backwards, if necessary, to do so. To 
retrograde thus is to advance .”—La Clef des Grands Mysteres, p. 364. 
Eliphas Levi did not practise what he preached, or he could not have 
written as he has written. 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAY 25 

anywhere. There is the gold of wisdom on every page of his 
unparalleled books, and to me they have been gain inestimable ; 
but the natural enthusiasm consequent on his extraordinary 
discoveries has at least occasionally carried him away, and I 
believe myself to deserve well at the hands of all students of 
occultism by pointing out where facts do not warrant his 
assertions, and where his earlier assertions are qualified by his 
own later and niaturer statements. 

The basis of Eliphas Levi’s philosophy and of all magic is 
declared to be the single assumption which is contained in the 
great Hermetic axiom : That which is above is equivalent to 
that which is below, and that which is below is equivalent to 
that which is above. This is the introductory statement of 
the celebrated “ Table of Emerald,” which claims to be the 
work of Hermes Trismegistus, though it cannot be traced in 
history to a more considerable antiquity than the seventh 
century of the Christian era. 1 The ultimate basis of Eliphas 
Levi’s teachings is not, however, to be found in any single 
dogma, but in Voltairean free-thought, and he has read 
Voltairean principles into the theurgic and theosophic ob¬ 
scurities of Kabbalistic writings. He is a pure rationalist who 
has adopted the hypotheses of the Kabbalah as the most 
trustworthy calculus of probabilities concerning an unseen 
world with which there is no real communication from either 
side in life. He considers God to be a hypothesis only trh 
probablement necessaire , and the question of personal im¬ 
mortality falls within the same category. Revelation in the 
true sense of the word—not in the sense of sacerdotal char¬ 
latanism—is so much out of the question that it does not 
strike our author as a possibility which need be seriously dis¬ 
cussed, and the divinity which he attributes to Jesus Christ 
is the divinity of the natural man, who by sacrifice of self, and 
by passing into the region of symbolism, identifies Himself, 
humanly speaking, with God, that is, with the human concep¬ 
tion of Deity. It is evident that the simple naturalism of 
these assumptions, however much it may be supplemented by 
Kabbalistic reasonings, the hypothetical nature of which he 
openly allows, can never provide us with an absolute religious 


Figuier, VAlchemic et les Alchemistes, p. 42. 


26 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


certitude, which he promised in the Dogme et Rituel , nor 
with a universal science, which he has also promised, and so, 
as a fact, it proves, for the magical science of Eliphas Ldvi is 
essentially one of power—the power of an emancipated will 
over wills which are not emancipated, the power of a self- 
controlled and self-containing man over the ill-governed pas¬ 
sions of the multitude, the power of an intelligence which is 
initiated into the doctrine of the transfiguration of dogmas 
over the innumerable children of credulity, the power of the 
enlightened man over his proper self, and his scientifically 
unlimited power over nature. The secrets contained in his 
books are concerned with the development and direction of 
these energies for the progression of humanity at large, for the 
elevation of those who possess them, and for the multiplica¬ 
tion of natural resources. The occult doctrine of revelation 
by analogy and correspondences in the three intelligible 
worlds finds in Eliphas Levi its only lucid exponent, and yet 
there is little doubt that, with the characteristic ingenuity of 
the symbolist, he has read into “the universal dogma” a far 
more extensive meaning than it possessed for the author of 
“ the admirable symbol.” For the traditional Hermes it was 
simply an assertion to which modern science is slowly and 
painfully working up by the a posteriori method, that there is 
only one substance of which all material things are transitory 
modifications. Quod superius sicut quod inferius , and con¬ 
versely—but for what? Not to establish a system of corre¬ 
spondence between the known and the unknown, but ad 
perpetranda miracula rei unius , that is, the magnum opus 
of metallic transmutation. The doctrine of universal analogy 
as the basis of progressive revelation is a noble and beautiful 
hypothesis which recommends itself eminently to reason, and 
once properly understood it would be an inexhaustible foun¬ 
tain of pure inspiration for the poetry of the age to come; it 
transforms the whole visible universe into one grand symbol, 
and the created intelligence of man becomes a microcosmic 
god whose faculties are in exact though infinitesimal propor¬ 
tion with the uncreated and eternal mind. Apart from direct 
revelation, it would be truly “the sole possible mediator be¬ 
tween the seen and the unseen,” establishing the grounds of 
faith in the rationality of a single assumption, and harmoniz- 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAY 27 


ing the positivism of physical science with the religion of 
legitimate aspirations towards the infinity of the unknown. 
But the possibility of direct communication with the invisible 
worlds, based on the claim of the ages, is of solemn and 
palmary importance, and is not to be excluded from con¬ 
sideration by the exigencies of any hypothesis ; so when the 
hypothesis of universal analogy in the hands of Eliphas Levi 
practically rejects this possibility, it is right to point out that 
his doctrine of correspondences is a pure assumption, which, 
from his own rationalistic standpoint, is utterly unprovable, 
and the possible fact of communication between the seen and 
the unseen is a preferable object of investigation to a plausible 
theory. The doctrine, moreover, supposes operations which 
are intellectually inconceivable. “ Measure a corner of 
creation, make a proportionally progressive multiplication, 
and all infinity will multiply its circles filled with universes, 
which will pass in proportional segments between the ever- 
extending branches of your ideal compass.” 1 Mathematics 
and reason alike contradict this statement; the multiplica¬ 
tion of the finite will produce only the finite. But 
even if the operation were possible, what would follow 
from this romance of arithmetic ? What is meant to 
follow is this: that the knowledge of a part gives the 
knowledge of the whole. Not always! If the circum¬ 
ference of a circle be so enormous that in its visible 
portion we can perceive no curve, we shall never know, 
even approximately, the area of that circle. The best 
argument in favour of the hypothesis, though it may seem 
paradoxical to say so, is that it gives full and complete 
expression to the inevitable anthropomorphism and material¬ 
ism of the human mind, which “idealizes itself to conceive 
God,” and idealizes the world around it to conceive the 
eternal world. The impossibility of doing otherwise is the 
best excuse for doing so, and we may take refuge with 
Leibnitz in the veracity of the causa causarum , which will not 
doom us to permanent intellectual deception. The doctrine 
of analogy may be taken, therefore, as a great help provided 
by natural necessity, but do not let us exalt it into the sole 


1 Histoire de la Magie, p. 7. 


28 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


guide and mediator ! Let us seek rather to establish the 
philosophy of the transcendental on a basis of psychic fact. 
Assumptions, however plausible, are no better evidence of 
things unseen than the faith which is now considered 
insufficient. Thus, the hypotheses of God and Immortality 
are balanced by the hypothesis of analogy, and this imaginary 
equation is presented to us as the Absolute Science, supple¬ 
mented by a work of uncertain origin, written in symbols, 
which, in their combination, are supposed to explain all 
mysteries and reveal all secrets. 

Passing, at length, from the assumptions of £liphas Levi to 
his matter and method, it will be seen that, in accordance 
with the traditions of occultism, he has surrounded his teach¬ 
ings with enigmas and mysteries. I have not felt justified in 
removing these veils, which serve a purpose, but I have 
endeavoured to arrange them so that the secrets which they 
are supposed to hide will scarcely escape the student. 1 It 
will be evident to any one that the true adepts of a divine 
science would never really enclose dangerous or “ indicible ” 
arcana in anagrams and word-puzzles, which exert only the 
ingenuity of the inquirer, and give absolutely no guarantee of 
the moral or other qualifications of those who solve them. 
These ingenuities are the stock-in-trade of the thaumaturge, 
pour egarer les profanes. The verbum inenarrabile of the 
Neo-Platonists, the Tetragrammaton, Ararita, and Agla of 
the Hebrews, the “ nom occulte du grand Arcane are mys¬ 
teries of no importance in themselves. They are signs and 
pantacles which have no essential virtue or significance. A 
universal science may be resumed in a single figure, but the 
figure of itself will never give the universal science to an 
uninitiated student; the volumes devoted to the philosophy 
of the Magi by Eliphas Levi reveal the secrets of magic to the 
careful inquirer without the false lights of double meanings 
and the delusive elucidations of cryptograms. When we are 

1 The explanation of the “ incommunicable axiom ” contained in the 
symbol which appears on p. 91 was imparted to me under the seal of 
secrecy, and was of so much importance that after ten years I have had 
no difficulty in forgetting it. All these devices are mere trickery designed 
for the misdirection of frivolity, and will be properly disregr rded by a 
student. 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL PSSA Y 


29 


told that the revelation of the Great Arcanum would revolu¬ 
tionize earth and heaven, it is the heaven of human concep¬ 
tions which is referred to, the Quod Superius of the Hermetic 
formula, according to the interpretation of Eliphas Levi. The 
bouleversement in question is the application of the secret 
doctrine to the creation of a new sequence of theological 
ideas, and Eliphas Levi is the illuminated pioneer who has 
opened up the way for such a change. 

An excessively scarce pantacle of Trithemius, described in 
the Histoire de la Magie ,* is declared by Eliphas Levi to con¬ 
tain the final secret and indicible formula of the Great 
Arcanum. “ This pantacle is. composed of two triangles—one 
white and one black—which are joined at the base. Beneath 
the inverted apex of the black triangle there is a fool crouch¬ 
ing, painfully twisting his head, and looking with a grimace of 
terror at his own image reflected in the obscurity of the black 
triangle, while a man in knightly garments, in the vigour of 
maturity, with a steady glance and a strong yet pacific attitude 
of command, is balanced on the apex of the white triangle, 
within which are the letters of the divine tetragram.” 

Eliphas Levi provides the exoteric explanation as follows: 
—“The wise man depends on the fear of the true God, while 
the fool is crushed by his terror of the false god made in his 
own image.” Its esoteric significance is as follows:—Unin¬ 
itiated humanity creates God by a blackened, magnified, and 
distorted resemblance of itself, which it reflects on the illimit¬ 
able background of stupidity and ignorance, then it crouches 
and shivers in the presence of the monstrous phantom. The 
adept also creates God, not, however, by reflecting his likeness 
on infinity, but the conception of his power and knowledge, 
figured by a symbol. This conception is reflected on the 
white triangle, that is, on the unknown world enlightened by 
the analogies of science. The initiate is represented as poised 
above this triangle, not only because the hypothesis which he 
has formed becomes the source of his intellectual and moral 
stability, but because the creation of this hypothesis is a 
theurgic act, and the intellect is above that which it creates. 
The initiate is, therefore, God for the profane, he is the 


1 Pp- 345> 346. 


30 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


actual finite deity who stands on earth for the hypotheti¬ 
cal, infinite God, and he has the right of life and death 
over any particular conception of divinity which may at 
any time dominate the crowd of men. The end of magic 
is thus the creation of the gods and the evolution of the 
Deific conception in the 'elite of humanity. From the 
Christian standpoint / all this is outrageous blasphemy, but 
it is the outcome of £liphas Levi’s philosophy. If any proof 
were wanting it would be supplied by the following passage :— 
“Jehovah is he who overcomes nature (understand human 
nature to be included), as we tame a rebellious horse and 
make it proceed where we will .” 1 This is the absolute, 
indicible , 2 theurgic secret. Here Jehovah cannot mean the 
all-creating God, to whom everything that exists must be 
necessarily in complete subjection, who cannot be described 
as overcoming by force what lies in the hollow of his hand. 
Jehovah here is the God-creating man, the self-conqueror, 
who by the creation de soi-meme has power over the chaos of 
human passion and over the blind forces of nature. The 
Great Magic Arcanum is thus in its primary phase the secret 
of the power of a completely emancipated mind over the 
slaves of superstition and ignorance. The unique Athanor 
of philosophic and moral alchemy, is the transmutation of 
darkness into light, in the intellectual order, of gross matter 
into gold refined, of ignorance into knowledge, of dead 
substances into substances quickened by the energies of 
veritable life, of the mere animal into the conscious man, 
and of man into God. “The stone becomes a plant, the 
plant an animal, the animal a man, and man greatens into 
Deity.” Quand Vhomme grandit Dieu s’ eleve. 

The elucidation here appended was submitted to me some 
years since by a familiar correspondent. Premising that the 
transcendentalism of Eliphas Levi was the philosophy of 
Machiavelli restated in the terms of the occult sciences, and 

1 La Clef des Grands Mysteres, p. 219. 

2 It is of course an absurdity to speak of any secret as really indicible. 
According to the Dogtne de la Haute Magie , every idea has its form, 
that is, its expression, and no idea is conceivable without its corresponding 
expression in speech. It may be imprudent, difficult, or wicked to pro¬ 
claim it publicly, but there are no inexpressible ideas. 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAY 31 


that the entire history of magic afforded no evidence for the 
existence of the Great Magic Agent, the writer proceeded to 
the consideration of the Great Magic Arcanum as follows :— 
“What did the symbolic Adam gain by his mysterious 
fall ?—the right to labour, to suffer, and to be free; he 
purchased Liberty. What did Psyche gain by her lamp and 
poniard ?—also the right to labour, to suffer, and to be 
free ; she too purchased Liberty. What was the fire which 
Prometheus brought down from heaven to animate his man 
of clay ?—it was the intelligence by which man becomes free, 
is set on his feet with his face towards the stars, and walks 
wheresoever he wills. The fire of Prometheus was Liberty, 
denied by the gods to men, and purchased for them by the 
Titan at the price of the vulture and Caucasus. What did 
Lucifer gain by his rebellion ? ” Here let the initiate himself 
respond. “ The intelligence which God produced by the 
breath of his mouth, like a planet detached from its parent 
sun, took the form of a radiant angel, and was saluted by the 
heavens under the name of Lucifer. This Intelligence, up¬ 
lifting its head, asserts itself by saying: ‘ I will not be 
servitude.’ Thereat the Uncreated Voice replies : ‘ Then 
shalt thou be suffering.’ But the Light answers : ‘ I shall be 
Liberty.’ Then saith the Supreme Voice : £ Pride will seduce 
thee, and thou wilt bring forth Death.’ Whereat the Created 
Light persists : ‘ I must needs strive with Death that I may 
conquer Life.’ God therefore detached from his breast the 
shining cord which detained the supreme angel, and behold¬ 
ing him plunge into the night which coruscated with his 
splendour, he let his love arise for this offspring of his 
thoughts, and God said : ‘ How beautiful was the Light.’ . . .” 
But if Liberty be the word which solves these enigmas, what is 
the word which CEdipus should have replied to the sphinx, 
who herself represents Liberty and Reason ? The fable of 
CEdipus reproduces that of Prometheus. Jupiter deprives 
man of the symbolic fire which is the possession of a free 
intelligence, and this tyranny is the seal of his ultimate doom. 
The tortures and chains of Prometheus do but insure it, and 
in the lapse of ages it is inevitably fulfilled. CEdipus destroys 
the sphinx; he is the intelligence Ittite who comprehends the 
mind of the vulgar, but exterminates instead of leading it, and 


3 2 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


this crime, or this error, is his own eventual destruction. He 
understood the follies and caprices of humanity, but he 
mistook the part of God towards humanity, and instead of 
avenging the martyrdom of Prometheus he avenged the 
downfall of his persecutor. The initiate who knows how to 
humour the caprice of the crowd, and at the same time to 
enchain it, is God for the crowd. Such is the outcome of 
6liphas Levi’s occult instruction in philosophy, and it may be 
defined in practice to aim at the creation of the gods. It 
proposes the deification of intelligence and the illuminated 
mind; it offers to the adept the secret of royalty and priest¬ 
hood ; it explains his right of life and death over the profane ; 
it indicates the method in the creation of adept-men who 
shall reform the conception of Deity. Therefore the word 
required for the salvation of (Edipus was the complementary 
side of his uncompleted equation. It is not lawful to write 
it in words, but you will understand the following symbol.” 
For the symbol in question, and its explanation, I must refer 
my readers to Saint Martin’s Tableau Naturel des Rapports 
qui existent entre Dieu , EHomme et E Univers. Long after 
this interpretation was written, we find in the “ Unpublished 
Letters of 6liphas Levi,” addressed to Baron Spedalieri, the 
following statement, which justifies the chief intuition of my 
correspondent:—“ The riddle of the sphinx has two answers, 
which are true only in a third : The first is God, the second 
is Man, and the third is the Man-God ” (p. 29). 

The Great Magic Agent is a working hypothesis designed 
to conciliate science and religion by a natural explanation of 
all prodigies, and to direct qualified investigators to the 
discovery of a universal force. But we must bear in mind 
that although the exuberant dogmatism of the Eogme et 
Rituel de la Haute Magie couches all statements concerning 
it in extremely authoritative language, it is a hypothesis 
and a hypothesis only, as the author himself admits at a 
later stage of his revelations. “The secret agent of the 
magnutn opus ... is Magnetized Electricity. The union 
of these two words does not reveal us much; nevertheless 
they perhaps enclose a force which can revolutionize the 
world. We say perhaps out of philosophic benevolence , for, on 
our part, we do not doubt the high importance of this great 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAY 33 

Hermetic Arcanum.” 1 The parts which I have italicized 
are conclusive, as regards the hypothetical nature of the force 
which Eliphas Levi believed himself to have discovered in 
the alchemical allegories, and the most he can assert con¬ 
cerning it is a supreme personal conviction. This force he 
usually terms the Astral Light, a name which is borrowed 
from Saint-Martin and the French mystics of the eighteenth 
century. It is an unfortunate one, because, in the first place, 
he does not pretend to determine the real nature of the agent 
he denominates, and, in the second place, because it is 
eminently liable to multiply false analogies. The meta¬ 
phorical use of the word “light” in philosophy has been a 
source of very serious misconceptions precisely on this score. 2 
The preservation of the images of all forms in the universal 
agent, which is the mirror of visions, supplies the author with 
his natural explanation of all kinds of apparitions, including 
those which are seen in necromantic evocations. It is in¬ 
vented to conciliate the reality of such visions with the 
futility of their general results, “ for the supposed spirits 
reveal nothing of the light beyond.” Modern Spiritualism 
has amply supplied this deficiency, though its mediums 
seem eminently liable to the control of Ananias. With 
regard to the magical experiences of Eliphas Levi, we shall 
do well to remember that the conservation of the images 
of objects in the Astral Light is a hypothesis, but the evoca¬ 
tion of Apollonius claims to be actual fact, and though the 
■ sceptical philosophy of the Magus degraded his own pro¬ 
digy, the serious student will perhaps find therein something 
more than a “ pathological value,” or the reve dun homme 
eveillef . . . The Great Magic Agent, like the Arcanum by 
means of which it is directed, is, at least in one of its 
phases, a moral force. The power which is promised to 
the emancipated and enlightened mind is dominion over 
Azoth, the domain of Magnesia, and the secret of quicken 
ing the dead substances of the alchemical symbolists. But 
unlike electricity, steam, &c., this mysterious Azoth canno 
be directed by a man of science working in secret and 

1 La Clef des Grands My sieves, p. 207. 

2 Balmes’ Fundamental Philosophy , vol. i. 

3 Dogme , p. 273. 


C 


34 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


possessing only his knowledge and his instruments. He 
must form the magic chain; he must be able to set in 
motion and direct a current of enthusiasm in unenlightened 
humanity. It is not, therefore, primarily a physical force. 
The hopes, the fears, the caprices, the weaknesses, the 
imaginations of the crowd, in a word, its Freewill, these 
are the monster to be conquered, these are the blind force 
which equally lends itself to good or evil. The ill-directed 
force of will, the undirected strength of passion, the blind 
and mad enthusiasm and the savage excesses of fury, the 
natural sense and instincts, the crude reasoning powers, 
and the plastic conscience of humanity, these are Azoth, 
these are the matiere premiere of the magnum opus ot 
universal reconstruction; these are the mysterious force 
which in its equilibrium is social life, progress, civilization, 
and in its disturbance is anarchy, revolution, barbarism, 
from which chaos a new equilibrium at length evolves, the 
cosmos of a new order, when another dove has brooded 
over the blackened and disturbed waters. This is the force 
by which the world is upset, the seasons are changed, by 
which the night of misery and misrule may be transfigured 
into the day of Christ— 

“ Dies venit, dies tua, 

In qua rejlorent omnia ”— # 

into the era of a new civilization, when the morning stars 
sing together, and all the sons of God utter a joyful shout. 

With regard to the Tarot, we may at once set aside its 
subsequent condemnation by £liphas Levi as utterly un- 
serious, yet as magic art depends on no special form of 
divination and on no single assumption, but on the experi¬ 
mental methods of science, we need not fear to moderate, 
if necessary, the importance he originally attributed to it. 
When hypothesis, which is necessarily tentative, arrays itself 
in dogmatism, and assumes the terminology of history, and 
when history supplies the lacunae in its materials from the 
imaginative realms of hypothesis, neither brilliant talent, nor 
even some inherent probability, can make the result worthy 
of earnest consideration. This, however, is 6liphas Levi’s 
method of proving the immense antiquity of the Tarot. 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAY 35 

He begins by stating that it is perhaps more ancient than 
the book of Enoch. 1 Outside the erudition of Dr Kenealy, 
no modern scholarship attributes any more remote antiquity 
to the latter work than the fourth century b.c. But £liphas 
Levi believes the Tarot to be the work of Hermes 
Trismegistus, 2 

“ Who uttered his oracles sublime, 

Before the Olympiads in the dew 
Of the early dawn and dusk of time.” 

And the book of Enoch is by implication of the same 
primeval epoch. Afterwards he speaks of the Tarot variously 
as the hieroglyphic work of Hermes, the Claviculse of 
Solomon, &c.; it is declared to have existed certainly before 
Moses and the prophets, and throughout the whole Dogme 
et Rituel this assumption is continued, its justification being 
reserved till the final chapter, when he promises to demon¬ 
strate that it is “ the primitive book.” 3 This demonstration 
is simply a series of ingenious suppositions which beg suc¬ 
cessively every important question. Thus he assumes that 
it was reserved only for the high priests, that it was identical 
with the divinatory instrument invented by Michas and 
described in Philo, that after the destruction of Jerusalem 
its figures were drawn on ivory, parchment, copper, and 
finally on cards, and thus has the Tarot come down to us. 
All this, of course, is romancing. Court de Gebelin, in his 
Monde Primitif vol. viii., is content with the attempt to 
establish its Egyptian origin and divinatory utility. Modern 
Egyptology has not corroborated his opinions on the former 
point, and the Egyptians do not seem to have been a card¬ 
playing nation. The facts, therefore, as opposed to the 
hypothesis, are these—that a hieroglyphic game and instru¬ 
ment of divination, having some quasi-Egyptian figures, but of 
unknown origin, was discovered by a French antiquary at the 
close of the last century. Its name Tarot suggests a con¬ 
nection with Tora, “the sacramental name which the Jews 
give to their inspired book.” 4 Its twenty-two trump cards 
recall the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew Alphabet, the 

1 Dogme, p. 68. 2 Ibid., p. 84. 3 Ibid., p. 234. 

4 La Clef des Grands Mysieres, p. 321. 


3 6 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


twenty-two chapters of the mystical book of the Apocalypse. 
&c. In the sixteenth century William Postel, the Kabbalist, 
in his Clavis Absconditorum a Constitutione Mundi, inscribes 
on the circlet of his symbolic key the four letters TAR O, 1 
but arranged in such a manner that it is uncertain how 
they should be read, and he writes of a hieroglyphic bool? 
which he calls the Genesis of Enoch. Finally, £liphas 
Levi solemnly testifies—i. That without the Tarot the 
magic of the ancients is a sealed book. 2. That it alone 
gives the true interpretation of the magic squares of the 
planetary genii as they are represented by Paracelsus. 3. 
That the rabbinical notary art is at bottom nothing else but 
the science of the Tarot signs, and their complex and various 
application to the divination of all secrets. 4. That he 
himself has opened all the doors of the ancient sanctuaries 
and ascertained the significance of all symbols by the means 
of this instrument. All this deserves our most serious 
attention, and the publication of a Tarot which shall be 
accurate in all its figures is much to be desired. If there 
be any key existing to the symbolism of the ages, besides 
that which is provided by internal evidence and analogy, the 
Tarot may be that key, and I am aware that it is used at 
the present day with great success by many practical 
transcendentalists. But take notice, that according to the 
same author, “Magnetic intuitions alone give force and 
reality to all Kabbalistic and astrological calculations, puerile 
perhaps and completely arbitrary if they are made without 
inspiration, by frigid curiosity, or in the absence of a 
determining force of will.” 2 This is the conclusion of a 
chapter which treats of the Tarot and of magical astrology. 
The Tarot is, therefore, like all instruments of divination, 
“a pretext for self-magnetization.” Elsewhere the author 
declares it to require “ the assistance of a good medium.” 2 
What has unlocked the secrets of universal symbolism to 

1 I have not altered this statement, but the Clavis was posthumously 
published, and the frontispiece to which the reference is made was the 
work of an editor, and not of Postel—a fact apparently as much unknown 
by Eliphas Levi, despite his scholarship, as it was by myself in the 
year 1886. 

2 Histoire , p. 156. 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAY 37 

Eliphas Levi is not the curious symbolism of the Tarot, but 
the intuitions of his own gifted mind and his power of dis¬ 
cerning analogies. In the creation of allegorical hieroglyphs 
there is in them so much meaning as the intelligence of their 
contriver can infuse, but in their interpretation there is so 
much meaning as the inspiration of the student can extract. 
The significance of symbols, therefore, varies in essence 
and extent with each individual, and their absolutely correct 
interpretation is eminently difficult to arrive at in a labyrinth 
of plausible possibilities. While, therefore, acknowledging 
to its full extent the extreme interest attaching to the Tarot 
and its apparent connection with the Kabbalah, it will be 
well to suspend our judgment with regard to its history, and 
to attribute the prodigies it works in the main to the clair¬ 
voyance of its consulters. 

The practical magic of Eliphas Levi traces thaumaturgic 
art to its purely natural genesis. His universal medicine 
is a moral specific based on the philosophy of the inter¬ 
action of mind and body, with special reference to the 
science of prestige in its application to curative purposes. 
The magnum opus of so-called metallic transmutation is 
the application of will-power to the modification of those 
natural substances which are the matieres mortes of the 
philosophers. The condemnation of much that is included 
in the scope of magical practices is a solemn warning to 
psychic investigators. Eliphas Levi doubtless lived to find, 
as did Cornelius Agrippa before him and as others will 
probably after, that there is much which is vain and futile 
in the pursuits of occult science, that evocation in the 
universal glass of visions is fatiguing in practice, and after 
the first few times generally barren in result, that the 
mysteries of the life beyond are seldom if ever revealed to 
the lucidity of clairvoyants, that the magical creation of 
gold is a conquest wrung from nature by the heart’s blood 
of the alchemist as hardly as it is commercially manufac¬ 
tured in the grinding mills of the competition of social life. 
The indiscriminate condemnation of spiritualism has a side 
of truth, but it originates in the exclusiveness of the adept. 
Just as the great Roman orthodoxy looks with suspicion 
and distrust on all independent religious speculation, on all 


38 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


“lay theology,” just as she denounces most miraculous 
phenomena occurring outside her own spiritual jurisdiction, 
so does Eliphas L£vi regard with contempt and dislike all 
magical wonders produced outside the sanctum regmtm of 
initiation. He is right in so far as initiation can provide pre¬ 
cautions against the dangers of psychical research. But 
whatever may be thought of modern spiritualism in its in¬ 
tellectual and moral aspects, if it has proved the existence of 
spiritual natures within and without us, it is entitled so far 
to our gratitude, for in that case it is not in hypothesis but 
in fact that our conviction may be grounded. 

I have reached the extreme limits of this criticism and 
must briefly sum up. The Great Arcanum is the secret 
of will-ability. It is the secret of the subjection of the 
sphinx of human liberty, the serpent of passionate desire, 
the Baphomet of superstitions, not by their destruction but 
by making all and each perform unconsciously the will of 
the adept. The science of Eliphas Levi is the science of 
power and prestige. But the great secret is the will and 
the great agent is enthusiasm with its ten thousand illu¬ 
sions, by which cataclysms are caused and by which the 
world is renewed. That this science should be occult is 
comprehensible, for to reveal the arcana of leadership to 
those who are led is to take the reins out of the hands of the 
charioteers and cast them to the winds. Those who are 
seeking an absolute religious certitude will not get the help 
they may have expected from Eliphas Levi as a possessor 
of “the universal science.” His system reduces God to a 
sensible and rational hypothesis, and it gives no proof of 
the soul’s immortality. It does not direct us to the eternal 
truth, but it tells us how we may reign over superstition and 
by superstition. 1 Some of us, however, are seeking God 
and the soul; we have no wish to pose as deities in the 
presence of our benighted fellow-creatures; we have no 
ambition to be adored as gods. Possibly, we could present 
to some sections of humanity a nobler notion of Deity, 
but it would be of our own conceiving, and conscience 
forbids us to impose on others an idea which has been 


1 Dogme, p. 217. 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSA Y 


39 


developed within us as an eternal truth without us; we can¬ 
not undertake to guide humanity until we have established 
a certainty for ourselves, and the Hermetic doctrine ot 
correspondences is not a certainty—it is a dogma. 

Still less have we any desire to reign over superstition or 
by superstition, which we detest with our whole hearts, 
and with which we will have no connection either as masters 
or servants. But a debt of considerable magnitude we 
still owe, as I conceive, to the writings of 6liphas Levi, 
whose true greatness is first and foremost in the elevation of 
his ethical philosophy. He has taught us to conciliate 
those opposing forces, physical and spiritual, which in their 
equilibrium are life and immortality; to harmonize the 
“liberty of individuals with the necessity of things;” and 
to prize the divine privileges of self-devotion. In the second 
place, the true greatness of 6liphas Levi centres in his bold 
attempt to establish a harmony between religion and science 
by revealing to reason the logical necessity of faith, by pro¬ 
claiming to faith the sanctity of natural reason, and by a 
rational explanation of all prodigies. He has taught us to 
venerate religion, but also to make way for science, and in a 
century of doubt and disillusion he has endeavoured to 
create, without the help of miracle or revelation, a reasonable 
hope for man in an unseen world and an eternal future. 

In the third place, the true greatness of 6liphas Levi 
consists in his revelation for the first time to the modern 
world of the great Arcanum of will-power, which com¬ 
prises in one word the whole history and mystery of magical 
art. Doctrine and theory are nothing—all magic is in the 
will, that secret of universal power in heaven and on earth. 
“ God is but a great will pervading all things by reason of 
its intentness,” says Glanvil, and man by the same faculty 
can raise himself from the circle of necessity into the circle 
of creative providence; as a part of the Grand Totality, 
which is the super-personal God, he can create and adapt 
in his turn. The transmutation of the philosophical metals 
is not, from this standpoint, a chemical process; rather, 
it is a process of transcendental and mystical chemistry by 
the application of the purified and emancipated will to the 
psycho-chemical instrument of a diaphanous imagination. 


40 


THE MYSTERIES 0E MAGIC 


Any neophyte who expends more than the thirty thalers of 
Khunrath the Tuetonic adept over the accomplishment of 
the magnum opus, deserves no part in the Regnum Dei of 
the life to come, for he misunderstands the first principles of 
the Hermetic philosophy. 

The question of will-power is closely connected with what 
is regarded by some as the greatest danger of modern 
Spiritualism. The medium submits himself to the will of an 
unseen individuality with no guarantee about the conse¬ 
quences. The adept in will-ability seeks, on the contrary, to 
establish his intellectual dominion over all the powers of the 
air by the force of invincible determination, and to attract by 
the sympathy of kindred inspiration, kindred faith, kindred 
greatness, kindred moral elevation, the intelligences of a 
higher order whom he cannot indeed command, but may 
draw towards him. 

When, in addition to what I have enumerated, we 
remember that £liphas Levi has originated a new departure 
in Kabbalistic exegesis, that his interpretations have infused 
new life into old symbolism, and that his doctrine of the 
transfiguration of dogmas—whatever may be its ultimate 
value — casts much light on comparative theology, it is 
sufficient for one incarnation, and with a certain modification 
of meaning we need have no hesitation in proclaiming him 
an initiate of the first order and the prince of the French 
adepts. 

A word must be added on the method of this digest which 
claims to be something more than translation and has at 
least been infinitely more laborious. I believe it to be in all 
respects faithful, and where it has been necessary or pos¬ 
sible for it to be literal, there also it is invariably literal. 
But the references in the original to the various subjects 
treated are scattered over the pages of many large volumes, 
and it need scarcely be said that their collation and arrange¬ 
ment, which I have taken great pains to accomplish as har¬ 
moniously as possible, have necessitated adaptation and 
elimination. Moreover, in spite of innumerable beauties of 
thought, in spite of a fresh, animated and unconventional 
style, and many eloquent passages, the originals as a whole 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAY 41 


are diffusive and tautological. Large portions of 6liphas 
Levi’s works are no more connected with magic, as ordinarily 
understood, than the theosophical speculations and fire-philo¬ 
sophy of Berkeley’s Siris are connected with the virtues of 
tar-water. I have struggled to eliminate discrepancies from 
my digest, but some of necessity remain which I trust the 
discernment of my readers will attribute to their true cause. 
A certain faculty of interpretation should also be brought to 
bear upon several extreme statements. I have undertaken 
this criticism in the interest of no system, but in the cause of 
truth, and I now recommend what follows to earnest and 
determined seekers in the supernatural as a proffered light 
to guide them amidst the aberrations of mysticism and the 
dangers of magical practices. The noble and generous spirit 
of £liphas Levi has passed behind the veil, and has doubtless 
achieved the immortality he aspired to, and the Absolute 
which he sought in life. May the Benediction of Azoth 
be upon him, and the Crown of Life reward him, and from 
his throne 

“Built beyond mortal thought 
Far in the Unapparent,” 

may his approval follow this translation, which I have under¬ 
taken in the cause of that Synthesis of Religious Belief of 
which he was the pioneer and the prophet! 


PART I 

THE THRESHOLD OF MAGICAL SCIENCE 1 


I.—Definitions of Magic. 

The persistent confusion of magic with the performances of 
conjurers, the hallucinations of the diseased, and the mal¬ 
practices of a few abnormal criminals, has endured too long. 
There are many persons, moreover, who would frankly define 
magic as the art of producing effects without causes, and, 
following this definition, it is immediately inferred by the 
crowd, with the common sense which characterizes it even 
when it is most unjust, that magic is an absurdity. Whether 
the secret science corresponds in any way to the descriptions 
attempted by the ignorant is, however, improbable; no one 
has the right to present it after this or that fashion ; it is 
that which it is ; it stands apart from other sciences, like 
mathematics, for it is the exact and absolute science of nature 
and her laws. Magic is the traditional knowledge of natural 
secrets handed down to us from the Magi ; and the Christian 
religion, which silenced the lying oracles and suspended the 
false wonders of false gods, does herself venerate the three 
Magi who came from the East, guided by a star, to adore 
the Saviour of the world in his cradle. Tradition still adorns 
these Magi with the title of Kings, because magical initiation 
constitutes a veritable royalty, and the great art of the Magi 
is termed by all adepts the Royal Art, or the Holy Kingdom 
—Sanctum Regnum. The guiding star is that same blazing 
star which is a symbol in all initiations. For alchemists 
it is the sign of the quintessence, for magicians the great 

1 See Note i. 


. 42 



THE THRESHOLD OF MAGICAL SCIENCE 43 


arcanum, for Kabbalists the sacred pentagram. We could 
prove that the study of this pentagram should indubitably 
have led the Magi to an acquaintance with the new name 
which was to exalt itself above all names and bend the knees 
of all beings who are capable of adoration. Thus magic 
unites in a single science all that is most certain in philosophy 
and most infallible and eternal in religion. It provides the 
human mind with an instrument of philosophical and religious 
certitude as exact as mathematics, and accounting for the 
exactitude of mathematics themselves. Consequently, the 
Absolute does exist in the order of intelligence and of faith. 
The Supreme Reason has not left human understanding to 
vacillate at hazard. There is an incontestable truth; there is 
an infallible method of knowing that truth, and, by its know¬ 
ledge, those who adopt it as the rule of their conduct can 
endow their will with a sovereign power, which will make 
them masters of inferior things and of all wandering spirits, 
that is, arbiters and monarchs of the world. 

If this be the case, why is this supreme science still un¬ 
known? How, rather, are we to assume in a dark and 
clouded sky the existence of so brilliant a sun? . . . The 
supreme science has been always known, but only by the 
flower of intelligences, who have understood the necessity 
of being silent, and biding their time. If a skilful surgeon 
succeeded, in the middle of the night, in opening the eyes 
of a man born blind, how would he make him understand 
before morning the existence and nature of the sun ? 
Science has its nights and mornings, because it endows 
the intellectual world with a life which has its regulated 
movements and progressive phases. Yes, the supreme and 
absolute science is magic, the science of Abraham and 
Orpheus, of Confucius and Zoroaster. Its doctrines were 
engraved on stone tables by Enoch and Trismegistus. Moses 
purified and reveiled them—this is the sense of the word 
reveal —when he made the holy Kabbalah the exclusive 
heritage of the people of Israel and the inviolable secret of 
its priests. The mysteries of Eleusis and of Thebes pre¬ 
served among the nations some symbols already mutilated, 
while their mysterious key was lost among the instruments 
of an ever increasing superstition. Jerusalem, the destroyer of 


44 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


her prophets, and so often prostituted to the false gods of 
the Assyrians and Babylonians, had at length, in her turn, 
lost the sacred word, when a Saviour announced to the Magi 
by the holy star of initiation appeared to rend the threadbare 
veil of the old temple, and to endow the church with a new 
tissue of legends and symbols which always conceal from the 
profane, and always preserve for the elect, the same eternal 
truth. 

It was the remembrance of this absolute in science and 
religion, of this doctrine summed up in a word, of this word 
alternately lost and found, which was transmitted to the elect 
in the old initiations ; this same memory, preserved or possibly 
profaned in the celebrated Order of the Temple, became to 
the secret associations of the Rosy Cross, 1 the Illuminati, and 
the Freemasons, a reason for their bizarre rites, their more or 
less conventional signs, and above all their common devotion 
and power. 

We do not deny that the doctrines and mysteries of magic 
have suffered profanation, and this profanation, renewed 
from age to age, has been a great and terrible lesson. The 
Gnostics caused the Gnosis to be proscribed by the Christians, 
and the official sanctuary was closed to transcendent initia¬ 
tion. Thus the hierarchy of Knowledge was compromised by 
the assaults of usurping ignorance, and the disorders of the 
sanctuary were reproduced in the State, for invariably, willingly 
or not, the king derives from the priest, and it is from the 
eternal sanctuary of divine instruction that earthly powers 
must receive their consecration and force in order that they 
may endure. The Key of science became abandoned to 
children, and, as might be expected, it was mislaid and prac¬ 
tically lo?t. At the same time, a man of high intuition and 
great moral courage, Count Joseph de Maistre, invincible 
Catholic as he was, when confessing that the world was 
destitute of religion and could not remain so for long, turned 
involuntarily towards the last sanctuaries of occultism, and 
passionately called for the day when the natural affinity which 
subsists between science and faith should at length unite them 
in the mind of some man of genius. The prediction is in 


1 See Note 2. 


THE THRESHOLD OF MAGICAL SCIENCE 45 

course of realization; the alliance of science and faith, long 
consummated, is at length manifested, though not by a man 
of genius, for that is not required in order to behold the light ; 
truth only needs to be discovered, and then the simplest 
persons may comprehend and at need expound it. For all that 
it is never destined to become vulgar, because it is hierarchic, 
while anarchy alone flatters the prej udices of the crowd ; ab¬ 
solute truths are not needful for the masses, otherwise progress 
would be suspended and life cease in humanity; the ebb and 
flow of ideas, the clash of opinions, the extremes of fashion, 
determined ever by the fancy of the moment, are requisite for 
the intellectual growth of the people, who are well aware of 
the fact, and hence so willingly abandon the chair of doctors 
and flock to the rostrum of charlatans. Those even who 
ostensibly are occupied in a special manner with philosophy 
commonly resemble children playing at conundrums and ex¬ 
cluding those from the game who know the answers before¬ 
hand, for fear they should spoil the fun by depriving the 
puzzles of their interest. 

Magic, though the science of nature, is closely connected 
with religion, since it initiates men into the secrets of divinity. 
Now, this forgotten science still subsists unmutilated under 
the veil of hieroglyphic symbols as well as in living tradi¬ 
tions or superstitions, and beneath the shadow of the ancient 
mysteries. We propose to discover its occult Knowledge, 
which was merely disfigured by the Gnostics. In so far as 
magic has been profaned by the wickedness of men, the 
Church has rightly proscribed it. The false Gnostics debased 
the pure name of Gnosticism and the sorcerers outraged the 
sons of the Magi; yet religion, that friend of tradition, that 
guardian of the treasures of antiquity, can no longer exclude 
a doctrine which is anterior to the Bible, and as completely 
agrees with the traditional respect for the past as with all the 
most vital hopes for progress and for the future. The common 
people are initiated by toil and by faith in property and know¬ 
ledge. There will always be a common people, as there will 
always be children, but when aristocracy grown wise shall 
become a mother to the masses, the way of emancipation will 
be open to all, and by personal, gradual, progressive emanci¬ 
pation, all who are called will be enabled, by their own efforts, 


46 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


to attain the rank of the elect. This is the mystery of the 
future which ancient initiation concealed; for such elect of 
the future are reserved the miracles of nature made subject 
to the will of man. The pastoral crook must become the rod 
of miracles, as in the time of Moses and Hermes. The sceptre 
of the Magus shall again be that of the King or Emperor of 
the world, and he shall be rightfully chief among men who 
shall most excel in science and in virtue. In those days magic 
will be an occult science only for the ignorant. Universal 
revelation shall unite every link in its chain of gold; the epic 
of humanity shall close, and even the efforts of the Titans 
shall only serve to establish the altar of the true God. All 
the external forms which have successively vested the divine 
thought shall be born again in immortality and perfection; all 
the outlines which have been delineated by the successive art 
of nations shall unite to complete the image of God; purified 
and redeemed from chaos, dogma shall naturally produce an 
infallible ethic, and social order shall be constituted on this 
basis. For the grand symbols of religion are those also of 
secret science, while science and religion, united in the future, 
shall increase lovingly together, for truly they have had one 
cradle. 

And what then is magic ? Is there a secret science which 
is truly a power, as we affirm, a science rich in prodigies that 
may be compared with the miracles of authorized religions. 
To these two palmary questions we reply by a sentence and 
by a book. The book shall justify the sentence, which is this 
•—Yes, there has existed, and there still is, a potent and true 
magic; all that legends have related of it is fact, but, in this 
instance, and contrary to what commonly happens, the popular 
exaggerations have been not only beside but below the truth. 
Yes, there is a formidable secret, the revelation of which has 
once already revolutionized the world, as attested in the 
religious traditions of Egypt, epitomized symbolically by 
Moses at the beginning of Genesis. This secret constitutes 
the fatal knowledge of good and evil, and its result, when 
divulged, is death. Moses represents it under the emblem of 
a tree which is in the centre of the terrestrial paradise, and is 
connected by its roots with the tree of life; the four mystic 
rivers rise at the foot of this tree, which is guarded by the 


THE THRESHOLD OF MAGICAL SCIENCE 


47 


fiery sword and by the fourfold Biblical sphinx, the cherub of 
Ezekiel. ... Here I must pause, and I already fear that I 
have said too much. Yes, there is a unique, universal, 
imperishable dogma, powerful as supreme reason, simple like 
everything great, intelligible like all that is universally and 
absolutely true, and this dogma has been the father of all 
others. Yes, there is a science which confers on man pre¬ 
rogatives apparently superhuman. 

How is this possible? Because there exists a composite 
agent, at once natural and divine, corporal and spiritual, a 
universal plastic mediator, a common receptacle for the 
vibrations of movement and the images of form, a fluid and 
a force which may be termed in a certain sense the imagina¬ 
tion of nature. By means thereof all nervous organisms 
secretly communicate with each other; hence come sympathy 
and antipathy, hence dreams, hence the phenomena of second 
sight and extra-natural vision. This universal agent of the 
works of nature is the Od of the Hebrews and of Reichen- 
bach, and the Astral Light of the Martinists. The existence 
and possible use of this force constitute the Great Arcanum 
of practical magic; it is the rod of the thaumaturge and the 
key of Black Magic. It is blind in itself but is directed by 
the leaders of souls, or spirits of energy and action. It 
explains the entire theory of prodigies and miracles, and why 
diabolical and divine miracles are both possible. The instru¬ 
ment made use of is the same in both cases, the inspiration 
alone differs. To know how to make use of this force and 
never be overcome thereby is to crush the serpent’s head, and 
this arcanum contains all the mysteries of magnetism, which 
may be accepted as the general designation of the entire 
practical part of ancient transcendental magic. The supreme 
law of this force is equilibrium, and thus magic is the absolute 
science of equilibrium, which is the harmony resulting from 
the analogy of contrary things, while the Great Work is the 
conquest of the central point where the equilibrating power 
resides. 

The palmary character of transcendent magic is orthodoxy. 
Before all things it commands us to believe in God, and to 
adore without seeking to define him. After God, it exhibits 
to us eternal mathematics and balanced forces as the sovereign 


4 8 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


principles of things. Hence the occult sciences can alone 
impart certitude because they take realities and not dreams 
for their foundation. These sciences are three in number— 
the Kabbalah, Magic, and Hermeticism. The Kabbalah, or 
traditional science of the Hebrews, may be termed the mathe¬ 
matics of human thought. It is the algebra of faith, resolving 
all problems of the soul like equations by disengaging the 
unknown. It equips ideas with the clearness and rigorous 
exactitude of numbers. Its results are for the mind infall¬ 
ibility, though relative to the sphere of human knowledge, 
and for the heart profound peace. Magic, or the science of 
the Magi, was represented in antiquity by the disciples and 
possibly by the masters of Zoroaster. It is the knowledge of 
the secret and special laws of nature which produce hidden 
forces, those magnets, natural and artificial, existing outside 
of the mineral kingdom. In a word, and to employ the 
modern expression, it is universal magnetism. Hermeticism 
is the science of nature concealed in the hieroglyphs and 
symbols of the ancient world. It is the search for the prin¬ 
ciple of life, and, for those who have not obtained it, it is the 
dream of accomplishing the Great Work, the reproduction by 
man of that natural and divine fire which creates and regen¬ 
erates beings. 

In the religious order, to harmonize science with revelation 
and reason with faith; in philosophy, to demonstrate the 
absolute principles which conciliate all antinomies ; finally, to 
reveal the universal equilibrium of natural forces ; such is the 
threefold end of this work. We shall exhibit true religion 
in such characters that no one, believer or not, will be able to 
misconstrue it, and this will be the absolute in religious 
matters. We shall establish in philosophy the immutable 
characters of that Truth which is in science Reality, in 
judgment Reason, and in morality Justice. Finally, we 
shall make known those laws of nature which are maintained 
by equilibrium. Mysteries of the other world, concealed 
forces, strange revelations, mysterious maladies, exceptional 
faculties, spirits, apparitions, Hermetic arcana—we shall 
explain all these, nor do we hesitate to confess to our readers 
the source of our authority and knowledge. There exists an 
occult and sacred alphabet which the Hebrews attribute to 


THE THRESHOLD OF MAGICAL SCIENCE 49 

Enoch, the Egyptians to Thoth or Mercurius Trismegistus, 
the Greeks to Cadmus and Palamedes. This alphabet, 
known to the disciples of Pythagoras, is composed of absolute 
ideas attached to signs and numbers, and its combinations 
realize the mathematics of thought. Solomon represented it 
by seventy-two names written on thirty-six talismans, and it is 
still termed by Oriental initiates the Little Keys of Solomon. 
These keys are described and their use is explained in a 
book, the traditional doctrine of which goes back to the 
patriarch Abraham ; this is the Sepher Jetzirah, by the com¬ 
prehension of which we can penetrate into the concealed 
sense of the Zohar, the great dogmatic work of the Jewish 
Kabbalah. We have discovered the keys of Solomon, long 
forgotten and regarded as lost, and we have opened without 
difficulty all doors of the old sanctuaries wherein absolute 
truth seems to slumber. 

II.—Qualifications of the Magus. 

Magic is the divinity of man achieved in union with 
faith; the true Magi are Men-Gods, in virtue of their 
intimate union with the divine principle. They are with¬ 
out fears and without desires, dominated by no falsehood, 
sharing no error, loving without illusion, suffering without 
impatience, reposing in the quietude of eternal thought. 
They lean on religion, but are not weighed down thereby; 
they know what it is, and also that it is necessary 
and eternal. For debased souls, religion is a yoke imposed 
through self-interest by the cowardice of fear and the 
follies of hope; for exalted souls, it is a force which ori¬ 
ginates from an intensified reliance on the love of humanity. 
A Magus cannot be ignorant, for magic implies superiority, 
mastership, majority, and majority signifies emancipation by 
knowledge. The Magus welcomes pleasure, accepts wealth, 
deserves honour, but is never the slave of one of them; he 
knows how to be poor, to abstain, and to suffer; he endures 
oblivion willingly because he is lord of his own happiness, and 
expects or fears nothing from the caprice of fortune. He 
can love without being beloved; he can create imperishable 
treasures, and exalt himself above the level of honours or the 
prizes of the lottery. He possesses that which he seeks, 

u 


5o 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


namely, profound peace. He regrets nothing which must 
end, but remembers with satisfaction that he has met with 
good in all. His hope is a certitude, for he knows that good 
is eternal and evil transitory. He enjoys solitude, but does 
not fly the society of man; he is a child with children, joyous 
with the young, staid with the old, patient with the foolish, 
happy with the wise. He smiles with all who smile, and 
mourns with all who weep; applauding strength, he is yet 
indulgent to weakness; offending no one, he has himself no 
need to pardon, for he never thinks himself offended ; he 
pities those who misconceive him, and seeks an opportunity 
to serve them ; by the force of kindness only does he avenge 
himself on the ungrateful; he leans with affection on all 
arms stretched out to him in the day of trouble, and does not 
mistake the irritable pride of Rousseau for a virtue. He 
knows that he helps others by giving them the occasion for 
doing good, and he never meets an offer or a demand with 
a refusal. 

Perfection is equilibrium and excesses of privation are in¬ 
jurious like those of enjoyment. Macerations have their 
unhealthy indulgences, and Fakirs perish in the ecstacy of 
their pride. Contrite executioners of their own bodies and 
souls feel the cruelty of the God whom they think to avenge 
actually triumphing in them. The burners of men are those 
who delight in excessive self-discipline. Pius V. was an 
ascetic, and the terrible St Dominic a penitent, pitilessly 
rigorous to himself. 

The name of Magic—dreaded and execrated in the Middle 
Ages — has become in our days almost ridiculous; so are 
the occult sciences scarcely studied except by presumptuous 
ignorami or eccentric savants; women usually furnish the 
necessary instruments by their hysterical crises and dubious 
somnambulism. A man who seriously concerns himself with 
Magic will hardly pass as a reasonable being unless he be 
set down as an impostor. Credulous persons suppose that 
all magicians are workers of wonders, and being further con¬ 
vinced that only the saints of their own Communion have the 
right to perform miracles, they attribute the teachings and 
phenomena of magic to the agency of the devil or evil spirits, 
for our part we hold that the miracles of saints and of demons 



THE THRESHOLD OF MAGICAL SCIENCE 51 


are indifferently the natural results of causes acting abnormally ; 
nature never disturbs herself; her standing miracle is immut¬ 
able and eternal order. Moreover, Magic must not be 
confounded with Magism ; Magic is an occult force and 
Magism a doctrine which changes this force into a power. A 
magician without Magism is only a sorcerer ; a Magist without 
Magic is only one who knows. The author of this work is a 
magist who does not practise magic; he is a man of study and 
not a man of phenomena; he does not claim to be either 
magician or magus, and can only smile when he is taken for 
a sorcerer. He has studied the Kabbalah and the magical 
doctrines of the antique sanctuaries; he feels that he under¬ 
stands and sincerely believes and admires them; to him they 
are the noblest and truest science that the world possesses, 
and he deplores that they are known so little. 

To practise magic is to be a quack; to know magic is to be 
a sage. People seek prodigies above all things; to cog the 
dice of fortune, to shuffle the cards of fate, to obtain philtres 
and amulets, to bewitch enemies, to put jealous husbands to 
sleep, to discover the universal panacea of all the vices—not 
to reform them but preserve them from their two mortal 
diseases, deception and satiety; countenance such schemes, 
and one is sure to travel quickly on the high road of folly. 
It requires a powerful and firm mind to devote one’s self 
without danger to the occult sciences, and above all to 
the experiences which confirm their theories. The most 
celebrated adepts have had their moments of aberration. 
Pythagoras remembered that he was Euphorbius ; Apollonius 
caused an old beggar to be stoned that the plague might be 
stayed ; Paracelsus believed that a familiar spirit was concealed 
in the pommel of his sword ; Cardan died of hunger to justify 
his astrology; Duchentau, who reconstructed and completed 
the Magic Calendar of Tycho Brahe, also perished miserably 
over an extravagant experiment; Cagliostro compromised 
himself with rogues in the matter of the Queen’s necklace, 
and died in the dungeons of Rome. The interior of the ark 
is not to be looked at with impunity, and those who touch it 
risk the lightning like Uzzah. I forbear speaking of the fear, 
envy, and hatred of the vulgar, which ever pursue the ini¬ 
tiate who fails to conceal his knowledge. True sages escape 


5 2 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


this danger. The Abbot Trithemius lived and died peace¬ 
fully, while Agrippa, 1 his imprudent disciple, prematurely 
closed in a hospital his life of disquietude and torment. 
Before his death Agrippa blasphemed occult science as Brutus 
blasphemed virtue at Philippi, but, despite the despair of 
Brutus, virtue is more than a name, and, despite the dis¬ 
couragement of Agrippa, occult science is a truth. The 
science of Magism is contained in the books of the Kabbalah, 
in the symbols of Egypt and of India, in the writings of 
Hermes Trismegistus, in the oracles of Zoroaster, and in the 
works of some great men of the middle ages, like Dante, 
Paracelsus, Trithemius, William Postel, Pomponaceous, 
Robert Fludd, etc. The works of Magic are Divination, or 
prescience; Thaumaturgy, or the use of exceptional powers ; 
and Theurgy, or rule over visions and spirits. 

Divination and prediction are accomplished by observations 
and inductions of wisdom, by calculations of science, or by 
vision of enthusiasm. Divination and prediction by mere 
sagacity demand profound knowledge of the laws of nature, 
constant observation of phenomena and their correlation, the 
discernment of spirits by the science of signs, the exact 
nature of analogies and the integral or differential calculation 
of chances and probabilities. We may predict with certainty 
by help of the calculations of science, and with uncertainty 
by help of a sensitive impressionable nature, or magnetic 
intuition. It is in like manner with miracles; they are 
astounding because abnormal phenomena, produced in 
accordance with certain natural laws as yet unknown. 

Let us now touch at the dangerous and shrouded coasts of 
Magic, the intercourse with the other world, theurgy, and the 
evocation of spirits. Everything proves to us that there exist 
intelligent beings other than man; the hierarchy of spirits 
must be infinite as that of bodies. But one of the most, 
formidable axioms of ancient theurgy is, that we cannot 
behold the gods without dying because they are immortal, to 
see them we must pass out of our plane into theirs, and enter 
incorporeal life; now, if this be possible without dying, it is 
so only in an imaginary or fictitious manner, or by an illusion 


1 See Note 3, 


THE THRESHOLD OF MAGICAL SCIENCE 53 

resembling that of dreams. Hence theurgy is a dream 
pushed to the most terrific degree of realism in a man who 
believes himself awake. It is attained by weakening and 
exciting the brain, by fasts, meditations, and vigils. If this 
be so, what, it will be asked, is the use of Magic ? It enables 
man to understand the truth better, and to desire the good in 
a healthier and more effective manner. It helps to heal 
souls, and to comfort bodies ; it does not confer the means 
of doing evil with impunity, but it exalts man above animal 
lusts, and renders him inaccessible to the agonies of desire 
and fear. It constitutes a divinely radiating centre, chasing 
before it all phantoms and darkness, for it knows, it wills, it 
dares, and it is silent. This is the true Magic, not that of 
necromancers and enchanters, but that of the initiated and 
the Magi. True Magic is a scientific force placed at the 
service of reason; false Magic is a blind force added to the 
blunders and disorders of folly. 

What constitutes the chief attraction of Magic for the 
majority of curious persons is that they see therein an extra¬ 
ordinary means of satisfying their passions. No, say the 
misers, the Hermetic secret of metallic transmutation does 
not exist; otherwise we should purchase it and be rich. 
Poor fools, who believe that such a secret can be sold ! That 
is true, replies a sceptic, but if you, Eliphas Levi, yourself 
possessed this secret, would not you be richer than we are ? 
But who has told you that I am poor ? Have I asked you 
for anything ? Where is the sovereign who can boast that he 
has paid me for any secret of science? Ah ! cries a young 
man, were magic true I would learn it, so as to be loved by 
all women. Nothing short of that? Poor boy, the day will 
come when it will be too much to be loved by one ! Sexual 
love is an orgie of two, where intoxication soon induces 
disgust, and they part throwing glasses at each other’s heads. 
For myself, says a hoary idiot, I would become a magician so 
as to turn the world upside down. Boaster, if you were a 
magician, you would not be an imbecile, and in that case, 
even before the tribunal of your conscience, there would be 
no extenuating circumstances if you became a criminal! 
Give me the recipes of magic, cries the epicurean, so that I 
may enjoy always and suffer never. But here science herself 


54 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


replies :—Religion has already told you that blessed are those 
who suffer, and hence you have lost faith in religion. She 
has told you that blessed are those who mourn, and hence 
you have scoffed at her instruction. Hear now what experi¬ 
ence and reason also say : Sufferings test and create generous 
sentiments ; pleasures develop and strengthen immoral in¬ 
stincts. Sufferings strengthen against pleasure; enjoyments 
weaken against suffering. Woe to him who knows not how 
or declines to suffer! He shall be crushed by sorrows. 
Those who refuse to walk are dragged without mercy by 
nature. We are cast into life as into the open sea, and we 
must swim or perish. Such are the laws of nature, as taught 
by transcendent magic. Say now if one can become a 
magician so as to enjoy always and endure never. Occult 
scftmbe is reserved for men who are masters of their passions, 
ana chaste nature gives not the keys of her bridal chamber to 
adulterers. 

III.— The Distinction between Magic and Mysticism. 

The legitimacy of divine right belongs so absolutely to the 
priesthood that no true priesthood is possible without it. Initia¬ 
tion and consecration are a real heredity. Thus, the sanctuary 
is inviolable for the profane, nor can it ever be invaded by 
sectaries. Thus also the lights of divine revelation are 
dispensed in accordance with supreme reason, because they 
descend with order and harmony. God does not illuminate 
the world by means of meteors and lightnings, but ordains the 
revolution of every starry system about its individual sun. 
This harmony vexes some souls who chafe at duty, and men 
rise up who, unable to compel revelation into harmony with 
their vices, pose as the reformers of morality. If God hath 
spoken, they say with Rousseau, why have I heard nothing ?— 
Presently they add:—He has indeed spoken, but unto me 
alone—and what they began by dreaming they finish by 
believing. It is thus that sectaries are created—fomenters of 
religious anarchy, whom we would not see committed to the 
flames but immured as contagious maniacs. It is precisely 
in this way that there came into existence those mystic 
schools which profaned science. To establish direct com- 


THE THRESHOLD OF MAGICAL SCIENCE 55 

munication with demons and deities is to suppress the priest¬ 
hood and to undermine the foundation of the throne, a truth 
well known to the anarchic instincts of pretended illuminati. 
So also by the allurement of licence they sought to recruit 
disciples, and offered absolution beforehand to all kinds of 
moral scandals, satisfied with determination in revolt and 
with energy in protestation against priestly legitimacy. The 
• Bacchantes by whom Orpheus was torn in pieces believed 
themselves inspired by a God, and they sacrificed the Grand 
Hierophant to their deified intoxication. The Bacchic orgies 
were mystic intoxications, and ever have the sectaries of 
madness acted by irregular movements, frenetic excitements, 
and revolting convulsions; from the effeminate priests of 
Bacchus to the Gnostics; from the whirling dervishes to the 
epileptics of the tomb of Paris the deacon, the character of 
superstitious and fanatical exaltation is invariably the same. 
It is ever under pretext of the purification of dogma, ever in 
the name of a bizarre spiritualism, that mystics of all ages 
have materialized the signs of the cultus. It has been the 
same with the profaners of the science of the magi, for let 
us not forget that transcendent magic is the primitive 
sacerdotal art. It denounces all which is done outside the 
lawful hierarchy and it applauds the condemnation, though 
not the punishment, of sectaries and sorcerers. We connect 
purposely the two qualifications; all sectaries have been 
evokers of spirits and of phantoms, presenting them as gods 
to the world ; all arrogated to themselves the performance of 
miracles in support of their falsehoods. Hence also they 
were all goetics, that is to say, actual workers of black magic. 

Anarchy being the departing point and characteristic mark 
of dissident mysticism, religious concord is impossible among 
sectaries, but upon one point they are singularly unanimous, 
namely, in their hatred of hierarchic and lawful authority. It 
is in this therefore that their real religion consists, for it is the 
sole bond which joins them one to another. It is ever the 
crime of Ham, contempt of the family principle, outrage 
inflicted on the father, whose drunkenness is proclaimed aloud 
by all dissidents, whose nakedness and stupor they expose 
with sacrilegious laughter—moreover, all mystic anarchists 
confound the intellectual with the astral light; they adore the 


56 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


serpent instead of venerating the pure and submitted wisdom 
which sets a foot upon its head. So are they intoxicated by 
vertigo, and they fail not to fall into the abyss of madness. 
All fools are visionaries and may frequently believe them¬ 
selves to be wonder-workers, for hallucination being contagious, 
inexplicable things take place, or seem to take place, in the 
neighbourhood of the insane. Furthermore the phenomena 
of the astral light, attracted or projected in excess, are them¬ 
selves calculated to disconcert semi-learned persons. Its 
accumulation in the bodies of convulsionaries and the con¬ 
sequent violent distention of the molecules, endows them with 
such elasticity that bones may be twisted and muscles 
stretched abnormally. Whirlpools and waterspouts of this 
light are, so to speak, formed ; thus the heaviest bodies are 
uplifted, and can be sustained in the air for a period corre¬ 
sponding to the force of the projection. The sufferers then 
feel themselves on the point of bursting and beg for compres¬ 
sion and percussion to relieve them. The most violent blows 
and the strongest pressures being equilibrated by the fluidic 
tension, produce neither bruises nor wounds, and ease instead 
of afflicting the patient. 

Physicians are held in horror by the mad, and hallucinated 
mystics detest the wise; at first they flee from them, then 
persecute them blindly and despite themselves ; if such persons 
are gentle and tolerant, it is towards vices; reason submitted 
to authority finds them implacable, apparently the mildest 
sectaries are seized with fury and hatred when submission 
and the hierarchy are mentioned. Heresies have begotten 
troubles invariably. If a false prophet cannot pervert, he 
must kill. Such persons loudly demand tolerance for them¬ 
selves but take care not to extend it towards others. 
Protestants declaimed against the popes of Rome at the very 
time when Calvin burnt Servetus on his private authority. It 
was the crimes of the Donatists, the Circumcisionists, and a 
host of others, which forced Catholic princes to punish and 
the Church herself to deliver the guilty into their hands. 
Hearing the groans of irreligion, one would think that the 
Vaudois, the Albigenses, and the Hussites were lambs. Were 
they innocent, those darksome puritans of Scotland and 
England who carried the dagger in one hand and the Bible in 


THE THRESHOLD OF MAGICAL SCIENCE 57 

the other, preaching the extermination of Catholics? One 
sole Church in the midst of innumerable reprisals and untold 
horrors has ever raised and maintained in principle her horror 
of blood; it is the hierarchic and legitimate Church. 

By admitting the possibility and the existence of diabolical 
miracles, the Church has recognised the existence of a natural 
force which can be put to use both for good and evil. So 
also it has wisely decided that if sanctity of doctrine can 
legitimize miracle, a miracle by itself can never authorize 
novelties in belief. To say that God, whose laws are perfect 
and never belie themselves, makes use of a natural instrument 
to perform things which to us appear supernatural, is to affirm 
the supreme reason and immutable power of God, it is to 
enlarge our idea of his providence, and in no sense to deny his 
intervention in wonders operated to substantiate truth, as 
sincere Catholics will understand clearly. 

The false miracles occasioned by astral congestions have 
always an anarchic and immoral tendency because disorder 
invokes disorder. Hence the gods and the tutelaries of 
sectarians are athirst for blood and commonly guarantee their 
protection at the price of murder. The idolaters of Syria and 
Judea made oracles of infants’ heads torn violently from the 
bodies of these poor little creatures. They dried the heads, 
and, inserting under the tongue a gold plate inscribed with 
unknown characters, they placed them in holes made in the 
wall, provided them with a body of magical plants surrounded 
with fillets, lighted a lamp before these frightful idols, offered 
incense, and came to consult them religiously; with imagina¬ 
tions overpowered beyond doubt by the anguished cries of 
their victims, they believed that these heads spoke. More¬ 
over, it is an occult fact that larvae 1 are attracted by blood. 
In their infernal sacrifices the ancients hollowed a trench 
and filled it with warm and smoking blood, when they beheld 
pale and feeble shadows descending, ascending, and creeping 
about the foss, to which they had hastened from all quarters 
of the darkness. The circle of evocations was traced with the 
point of the blood-dripping sword; fires of laurel, alder, and 
cypress, were kindled upon altars crowned with asphodel and 


1 See Note 4. 


58 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


vervain ; then did the night appear to grow more cold and 
dark, the moon retired behind clouds, and there might be 
heard the feeble rustling of phantoms surging about the circle, 
while dogs howled piteously through the whole country. 

To do all it is necessary to dare all—such was the principle 
. of enchantments and their horrors. False magicians were 
bound to one another by their crimes, and believed that they 
had the power of causing fear in the rest of humanity when 
they had succeeded in frightening themselves. The rites of 
black magic have remained horrible as the impious worships 
it has produced, alike in the associations of malefactors who 
conspired against antique civilisations and among savage 
peoples—ever the same love of darkness, ever the same pro¬ 
fanations, the same sanguinary prescriptions. Anarchic magic 
is the cultus of death. The sorcerer surrenders himself to 
fatality, he abjures reason, he renounces immortality, and he 
immolates children. He abstains from honest marriage and 
is pledged to barren debauchery. On these conditions he 
enjoys the full fruition of his mania, he is intoxicated with his 
wickedness even to a belief in its omnipotence, and, trans¬ 
forming his hallucinations into reality, he believes himself able 
to evoke all death and hell at his pleasure. Barbarous and 
unknown signs, or those even which are absolutely insignificant, 
are best in black magic. Hallucination is more successfully 
attained by ridiculous practices and imbecile evocations than 
by rites or formulae calculated to keep intelligence on the 
alert. M. Dupotet claims to have made trial of the 
power of certain signs upon somnambulists; now, the signs 
which he draws in his occult book, 1 with precaution and 
mystery, have analogy, if they are not absolutely identical, 
with pretended diabolical signatures found in old editions of 
the Grand Grimoire. The same causes must always produce 
the same effects, and there is nothing new beneath the moon 
of sorcerers any more than under the sun of sages. 

The state of permanent hallucination is a death or abdi¬ 
cation of conscience; we are then abandoned to all the 
hazards of the fatality of dreams. Every memory carries its 
reflection, every evil desire creates an image, every remorse 


1 See Note 5. 


the threshold of magical science 59 

gives birth to a nightmare. The life becomes that of an 
animal, but of a suspicious and hunted animal; neither 
conscience, morality, nor time remain; realities exist no 
longer; everything gyrates in the whirlpool of the most 
insensate forms; an hour seems at times to endure for ages, 
while whole years may pass with the swiftness of a single 
hour. All phosphorescent with astral light, our brain is 
filled with innumerable reflections and figures. When we 
close our eyes, it frequently seems to us that a panorama, 
now brilliant, now darksome and terrible, unrolls beneath the 
lids. No sooner does the sufferer in fever close his eyes 
during the night than he is frequently dazzled by an insup¬ 
portable brilliance. Our nervous system, which is a complete 
electrical apparatus, concentrates the light in the brain, 
which is the negative pole of the apparatus, or projects it by 
the extremities, which are the points destined to set up 
circulation in our vital fluid. When the brain violently 
attracts a series of images analogous to a passion which has 
broken the equilibrium of the machine, the interchange of 
light is no longer made, astral respiration is stopped, and 
the bewrayed light coagulates, so to speak, in the brain. 
So do the hallucinated become a prey to the falsest and 
most perverse sensations. Some find enjoyment in peeling 
their skin off in strips and thus gradually flaying themselves; 
others eat and relish substances the least calculated for 
nourishment. Dr Brierre de Boismont in his learned 
“ Treatise on Hallucinations ” has collected a long series of 
very curious observations upon these and kindred points. 
All excesses of life, whether in misplaced goodness or in 
evil unopposed, tend to excite the brain and to produce 
stagnations of the light therein. Overweening ambition, 
arrogant pretensions to holiness, a continence full of 
scruples and desires, shameful passions gratified notwith¬ 
standing repeated warnings from remorse—all these lead to 
the depletion of reason, morbid ecstasy, hysteria, visions, and 
madness. A man is not mad, observes the learned doctor, 
because he has visions, but because he believes in his 
visions more than in common sense. Hence obedience 
and authority alone can save mystics; if their self-assurance 
be obstinate, there is no further remedy; they are already 


6o 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


excommunicated by reason and faith; they are the alienated 
of universal charity. They believe themselves wiser than 
society, they dream of forming a religion, and they stand 
alone; they think that they have abstracted the secret keys 
of life for their personal use, and their intelligence has already 
relapsed into death. 


PART II 

DOCTRINES OF OCCULT FORCE 1 


I.—The Hermetic Axiom. 

The synthesis of all religions is in the unity of a single 
dogma, namely, the affirmation of existence, and its equality 
with itself, which constitutes its mathematical value. There 
is only one dogma in magic, and it is this: The visible is 
the manifestation of the invisible, or, in other terms, the per¬ 
fect Logos bears in things which are appreciable and visible, 
an exact proportion with those which are inappreciable to 
our senses and invisible to our eyes. The Magus raises one 
hand towards heaven and points with the other to earth, 
and he says :—“ Above, immensity ! below, immensity also ! 
Immensity is equivalent to immensity.” This is true in the 
order both of the seen and the unseen. 

The ancient sages, of whom Trismegistus is the organ, 
formulated the unique dogma in the following terms:— 
“ That which is above is as that which is below, and that 
which is below is as that which is above.” In other words, 
the form bears proportion to the idea, which is the sole 
raison d'etre of all forms; the shadow is the measure of 
the body calculated with its relation to the luminous ray. 
The depth of the scabbard corresponds to the length of the 
sword; negation is proportional to the contrary affirma¬ 
tion; production is equal to destruction in the movement 
which conserves life; and there is no point in infinity 
which cannot be the centre of a circle having an expanding 
circumference receding indefinitely into space. 

1 See Note 6. 



62 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


The tradition of the Kabbalah rests wholly on this 
one magical dogma—that the visible is for us the propor¬ 
tional measure of the invisible. Measure a corner of 
creation, and make a progressive, proportionate multiplica¬ 
tion, when all infinity will multiply its circles, filled with 
universes, which will pass in proportional segments be¬ 
tween the ideal and increasing branches of your compass. 
Therefore, this primeval, unique, magical, kabbalistic, and 
immovable dogma indicates correspondences and analogies, 
and is, in fact, that of revelation by analogy in the three 
intelligible worlds. Analogy is the final word of science 
and the first of faith. It is the sole possible mediator be¬ 
tween the seen and the unseen, between the finite and 
infinite. It is the key of all the secrets of nature and the 
only Logos of all revelations. It invests the Magus with 
every natural power; it is the quintessence of the philoso¬ 
phers’ stone, the secret of perpetual motion, the quadrature 
of the circle ; it is the Temple based on the two pillars 
Jakin and Bohas, it is the key of the grand secret, it is 
the root of the Tree of Life, it is the knowledge of good 
and evil. To find the exact scale of analogies in things 
which are cognizable by science is to establish the grounds 
of faith and seize the rod of miracles. Metallic transmu¬ 
tation is performed spiritually and materially by the positive 
key of analogies. Everything in magic is predetermined 
by this universal dogma, in virtue whereof the pos¬ 
sibility of true evocations can be satisfactorily proved. It 
is this dogma which is eternally reproduced in the 
symbolism of all religious forms, and by it we know that 
the innate virtue of things has created words, and that 
there exists an exact proportion between ideas and words, 
which are the first forms and articulate realisations of 
ideas. 


II.— Theory of Will-Power. 

In the order of eternal wisdom, the end of human life and 
its numberless difficulties is the education of the will in man. 
The dignity of man consists in accomplishing that which he 
wills and in willing that which is good, conformably to the 


DOCTRINES OF OCCULT FORCE 


6 3 


knowledge of what is true. The good in conformity with the 
true constitutes the just; justice is the practice of reason; 
reason is the word of reality; reality is the science of truth; 
truth is idea in its identity with being. Man reaches the 
absolute idea of being by two roads — experience and 
hypothesis. Hypothesis is probable when it is necessitated 
by the instruction of experience; it is improbable or absurd 
when rejected by that instruction. Experience is knowledge 
and hypothesis is faith. True science of necessity admits 
faith; true faith of necessity coincides with science. Pascal 
blasphemed against science when he said that by mere reason 
man could not arrive at the knowledge of any truth. Hence 
Pascal died mad. But Voltaire did not less blaspheme 
against science by declaring every hypothesis of faith to be 
absurd and admitting solely the testimony of the senses as 
the rule of reason. Hence the last word of Voltaire was the 
contradictory formula, God and Liberty : God, that is to 
say, a supreme master who excludes all idea of liberty as 
understood by the school of Voltaire : and Liberty, that is to 
say, an absolute independence of all master, which excludes 
the whole notion of God. The word God expresses the 
supreme personification of law, and consequently of duty. 
If therefore by the word Liberty, it be agreed to understand 
with us the right to do one’s duty, we will in turn accept 
as our motto, and repeat without contradiction and without 
error: God and Liberty. As there is no liberty for man 
except in the order which follows from the good and true, it 
may be affirmed that the conquest of liberty is the grand 
labour of the human soul. Man, by emancipating himself 
from the servitude of evil passions, may be said to create 
himself a second time. Nature made him living and suffer¬ 
ing; he makes himself divine and immortal; he thus becomes 
the representative of divinity on earth, and exercises relatively 
its omnipotence. 


Axiom i. 

Nothing can resist the will of man when he knows what is 
true and wills what is good. 


6 4 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Axiom 2. 

To will evil is to will death. A perverse will is the 
beginning of suicide. 


Axiom 3. 

To will what is good with violence is to will evil, for 
violence produces disorder and disorder produces evil. 

Axiom 4. 

We can and should accept evil as the means to good, but 
we must never will it or practise it, otherwise we should 
demolish with one hand what we erect with the other. A 
good intention never justifies bad means; when it submits 
to them it corrects them, and condemns them while it makes 
use of them. 


Axiom 5. 

To earn the right to possess permanently, we must will 
long and patiently. 


Axiom 6. 

To pass one’s life in willing what it is impossible to retain 
for ever is to abdicate life and accept the eternity of death. 

Axiom 7. 

The more numerous the obstacles which are surmounted 
by the will, the stronger the will becomes. It is for this 
reason that Christ has exalted poverty and suffering. 

Axiom 8. 

When the will is devoted to what is absurd, it is repri¬ 
manded by eternal reason. 


Axiom 9. 

The will of the just man is the will of God Himself, and 
it is the law of Nature. 


DOCTRINES OF OCCULT FORCE 


65 


Axiom 10. 

The understanding perceives through the medium of the 
will. If the will be healthy, the sight is accurate. God 
said—“ Let there be light! ” and the light was. The will 
says—“ Let the world be such as I wish to behold it! ” and 
the intelligence perceives it as the will has determined. 
This is the meaning of the word Amen , which confirms the 
acts of faith. 

Axiom 11. 

When we produce phantoms we give birth to vampires, 
and must nourish these children of nightmare with our own 
blood and life, with our own intelligence and reason, and 
still we shall never satiate them. 

Axiom 12. 

To affirm and will what ought to be is to create; to affirm 
and will what should not be is to destroy. 

Axiom 13. 

Light is an electric fire, which is placed by nature at the 
disposition of the will; it illuminates those who know how 
to make use of it, and burns those who abuse it. 

Axiom 14. 

The empire of the world is the empire of light. 

Axiom 15. 

Great minds with wills badly equilibrated are like comets, 
which are abortive suns. 


Axiom 16. 

To do nothing is as fatal as to commit evil, and it is more 
cowardly. Sloth is the most unpardonable of the deadly 
sins. 

Axiom 17. 

To suffer is to labour. A great misfortune properly 
endured is a progress accomplished. Those who suffer 
much live more truly than those who undergo no trials. 


E 


66 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Axiom 18. 

The voluntary death of self-devotion is not a suicide— 
it is the apotheosis of free-will. 

Axiom 19. 

Fear is only indolence of will; and for this reason public 
opinion brands the coward. 

Axiom 20. 

An iron chain is less difficult to burst than a chain of 
flowers. 


Axiom 21. 

Succeed in not fearing the lion, and the lion will be afraid 
of you. Say to suffering—“ I will that thou shalt become a 
pleasure,” when it will prove to be such, and more even than 
a pleasure, for it will be a blessing. 

Axiom 22. 

Before deciding that a man is happy or otherwise, seek 
to ascertain the bent of his will. Tiberius died daily at 
Caprea, while Jesus proved His immortality and His divinity, 
even upon Calvary and the Cross. 


III. —The Translucid. 

Every individuality is indefinitely perfectible, since the moral 
order is analogous to the physical, and in the physical order 
we cannot conceive a point which is unable to dilate or 
enlarge itself, and radiate in a philosophically infinite circle. 
What can be said of the entire soul must be also predicated 
of each faculty thereof. The understanding and the will of 
man are instruments which are incalculable in their power 
and capacity. But the will and understanding have an 
auxiliary and instrument in a faculty which is too little 
understood, the omnipotence of which exclusively belongs 
to the domain of magic. I speak of the imagination, which 
Kabbalists call the Diaphane or the Translucent. 


DOCTRINES OF OCCULT FORCE 


67 


Imagination is actually as the eye of the soul, and it is 
therein that forms are delineated and preserved; by its 
means we behold the reflections of the invisible world, it is 
the mirror of visions and the apparatus of magical life. 
Thereby we cure diseases, modify the seasons, ward off 
death from the living, and resuscitate those who are dead, 
because this faculty exalts the will and gives it power over 
the universal agent. 

Imagination determines the form of the child in its 
mother’s womb, it gives wings to contagion, and points the 
weapons of warfare. Are you exposed in a battle ? Believe 
yourself as invulnerable as Achilles, and you will be so, 
says Paracelsus. Fear attracts bullets, and courage turns 
them back on their path. It is well known that persons 
whose limbs have been amputated complain often of pains 
in the members which they no longer possess. Paracelsus 
operated on living blood by medically treating the result 
of a bleeding; he cured headaches at a distance by operating 
on locks of hair; he forestalled, by the science of the 
imaginary unity and solidarity of the whole with its parts, 
all the theories, or rather all the experiences, of our most 
famous mesmerists. So were his cures miraculous, and he 
deserved that there should be added to his name of Philip 
Theophrastus Bombast that of Aureolus Paracelsus, with the 
further epithet of divine ! 

Imagination is the instrument of the adaptation of the 
Logos. In its application to reason it is genius, for reason, 
like genius, is one amidst the complexity of its operations. 

The soul can perceive by itself and without the mediation 
of the corporeal organs, by means of its sensibility and its 
Diaphane, the objects, whether spiritual or corporeal, which 
exist in the universe. There is no invisible world, there 
are merely various degrees in the perfection of organs. 
The body is the rude representation and perishable coating 
of the soul. Spiritual and corporeal are words which 
merely express degrees in the tenuity or density of substance. 
What we call the imagination in man is the inherent faculty 
of the soul to assimilate to itself the images and reflections 
contained in the living light, or Great Magic Agent, of which 
we shall subsequently treat. These images and reflections 


68 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


are revelations when science intervenes to disclose to us 
their Logos or light. The man of genius differs from the 
dreamer and the madman in this only, that his creations are 
analogous to truth, while those of madmen and dreamers 
are lost reflections and wandering images. Thus, for the 
sage to imagine is to see, as for the magician to speak is 
to create. 

Demons, souls, and the rest, can therefore be really and 
truly beheld by means of the imagination ; but the imagina¬ 
tion of the adept is diaphanous, whilst that of the uninitiated 
is opaque. The light of truth traverses the one as through 
a crystal window, and is refracted in the other as in a vitreous 
mass full of scoriae and foreign matter. 

The things which contribute most to the errors of the vulgar 
and the extravagances of the insane are the reflections of de¬ 
praved imaginations in one another. But the seer knows with 
an absolute knowledge that the things he imagines are true, 
and experience invariably confirms his visions. The means 
by which such lucidity can be acquired will be described 
in due course. 

IV.— The Great Magic Agent, or The Mysteries 
of the Astral Light. 

There exists a force in Nature which is far more powerful 
than steam, by means of which a single man, who can master 
it and knows how to direct it, might throw the world into 
confusion and transform its face. It is diffused through 
infinity ; it is the substance of heaven and earth, for it is 
either fixed or volatile according to its degrees of polariza¬ 
tion. It was termed by Hermes Trismegistus the Grand 
Telesma. When it produces radiance it is called light. It 
is that substance which was created by God before all else 
when He said: Let there be light. It is substance and 
motion at one and the same time; it is a fluid and a 
perpetual vibration. The inherent force by which it is put 
into activity is called magnetism. In infinite space, it is 
ether, or etherized light; it becomes astral light in the stars 
which it magnetizes, while in organized beings it becomes 
magnetic light or fluid. In man it forms, the astral body, 


DOCTRINES OF OCCULT FORCE 


69' 


or plastic mediator. The will of intelligent beings acts 
directly on this light, and, by means thereof, upon all nature, 
which is made subject to the modifications of intelligence. 
This force was known to the ancients ; it consists of a univer¬ 
sal agent having equilibrium for its supreme law, while its 
direction depends immediately on the Great Arcanum of 
transcendent magic. By the direction of this agent we can 
change the very order of the seasons, produce in the night the 
phenomena of day, correspond instantaneously from one end 
of the earth to the other, discern, like Apollonius, what is 
taking place at the Antipodes, heal or hurt at a distance, and 
endow human speech with a universal reverberation and 
success. This agent, which barely manifests under the 
uncertainties of the art of Mesmer and his followers, is 
precisely what the mediaeval adepts called the first matter of 
the magnum opus. The Gnostics represented it as the 
burning body of the Holy Ghost, and this it was which was 
adored in the secret rites of the Sabbath or the Temple under 
the symbolic figure of Baphomet, or of the Androgyne Goat 
of Mendes. 

This ambient and all-penetrating fluid, this ray detached 
from the sun’s splendour, and fixed by the weight of the 
atmosphere and by the power of central attraction, this body 
of the Holy Ghost, which we call the Astral Light and the 
Universal Agent, this electro-magnetic ether, this vital and 
luminous caloric, is represented on ancient monuments by 
the girdle of Isis, which twines in a love-knot round two 
poles, by the bull-headed serpent, by the serpent with the 
head of a goat or dog, in the ancient theogonies, and by the 
serpent devouring its own tail, emblem of prudence and of 
Saturn. It is the winged dragon of Medea, the double 
serpent of the caduceus, and the tempter of Genesis ; but it 
is also the brazen snake of Moses, encircling the Tau, that is, 
the generative lingam ; it is the Hyle of the Gnostics, and 
the double tail which forms the legs of the solar cock of 
Abraxos. Lastly, it is the devil of exoteric dogmatism, and 
is really the blind force which souls must conquer, in order 
to detach themselves from the chains of earth; for if their 
will do not free them from its fatal attraction, they will 
be absorbed in the current by the same power which first 


70 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


produced them, and will return to the central and eternal 
fire. 

The Great Magic Agent is revealed by four kinds of 
phenomena, and has been subjected to the uncertain mani¬ 
pulations of profane science under four names—caloric, light, 
electricity, magnetism. These four imponderable fluids are, 
therefore, the diverse manifestations of one and the same 
force, which is that substance created, as already declared, by 
God before all else, when He said, “ Let there be Light! ” 
and there was light. Everything which exists has been 
evolved from it, and it preserves and reproduces all forms. 

The Great Magic Agent is the fourth emanation of the 
life-principle, of which the sun is the third form (see the 
initiates of the Alexandrian School and the dogma of Hermes 
Trismegistus), for the day-star is only the reflection and 
material shadow of the sun of truth which illuminates the 
intellectual world, which itself is in turn but a gleam borrowed 
from the Absolute. The sun of the divine world is the 
infinite, spiritual, and uncreated light; this light is, so to 
speak, verbalised in the philosophical world, and becomes 
the focus of souls and of truth; then it is incorporated and 
changed into visible light in the sun of the third world, the 
central sun of suns, of which the fixed stars are the immortal 
sparks. 

Thus the world’s eye, as the ancients called it, 1 is the 
mirage of the reflection of God, and the soul of the earth is 
a permanent glance from the sun which the earth conceives 
and conserves by impregnation. The moon concurs in this 
impregnation of the earth by projecting towards her a solar 
image during the night, so that Hermes was correct when he 
said, speaking of the Great Agent, “The sun is its sire, the 
moon its mother.” Then he adds, “ The wind has borne it 
in its belly,” for the atmosphere is the recipient, and, as it 
were, the crucible of the solar rays, by means of which there 
is produced that living image of the sun which penetrates, 
vivifies, and fructifies the entire earth, determining all that 
is brought forth on its surface by its continual currents and 
emanations, which are analogous to those of the sun itself. 


1 See Note 7. 


DOCTRINES OF OCCULT FORCE 


7 i 


The Astral Light, being the instrument of life, naturally 
collects at living centres ; it cleaves to the kernel of planets 
as to the heart of man (and by the heart we understand, in 
magic, the great sympathetic), but it identifies itself with the 
individual life of the existence which it animates. Thus it is 
terrestrial in its connection with the earth, and exclusively 
human in its connection with man. We are, in fact, satur¬ 
ated with this light and continually project it to make room 
for more; by this projection the personal atmosphere of 
Swedenborg is created. The settlement and polarization of 
light about a centre produces a living being; it attracts all 
the matter necessary to perfect and preserve it, but it is not 
the immortal spirit, as the Indian hierophants, and every 
school of Goetic magic, have imagined. It is by no means 
the body of the protoplastes , as was supposed by the Theur- 
gists of the Alexandrian sect; it is the first physical manifes¬ 
tation of the Divine Breath. God creates it eternally, and 
man, in the image of the Deity, modifies and apparently 
multiplies it in the reproduction of his species. 

The primordial light, vehicle of all ideas, is the mother of 
every form, and transmits them from emanation to emanation, 
merely diminished or altered in proportion to the density of 
the mediums. All forms correspond to ideas, and there is no 
idea without its proper and individual form. Secondary forms 
are reflections which return to the focus of emanated light. 
The forms of objects being a modification of light remain 
where the reflection relegates them. Thus, the Astral Light 
or terrestrial fluid is saturated with images or reflections of all 
kinds, which can be evoked by our soul and submitted to its 
Diaphane, as the Kabbalists call it; this is the modus operandi 
of all visions. What we call imagination is simply the inherent 
faculty of the soul to assimilate the images and reflections 
contained in the living light which is the Great Magnetic 
Agent. The Astral Light preserves the images of all that has 
taken place in the past, the reflections of worlds gone by, and 
analogical foreshadowings of worlds to come. It is by means 
of this light that statical visionaries place themselves in com¬ 
munication with all the worlds, as so frequently occurred to 
Emanuel Swedenborg, who was, nevertheless, not perfectly 
lucid, since he could not distinguish between direct rays and 


72 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


reflections. Clairvoyants merely evoke the images of places 
in the Astral Light; they do not actually travel to those places, 
and they can see nothing but what exists in this light, which 
is latent, and, acting on the nerves, enables somnambulists to 
perceive by means of the nerves only and without the help of 
radiating light. 

The Book of Consciences which, according to the Christian 
doctrine, will be opened on the Last Day, is nothing more 
than the Astral Light, in which are preserved the impressions 
of every Logos, that is, every action and every form. There 
are no solitary acts and there are no secret acts; all that we 
truly will, that is, all that we confirm by our deeds, is written 
in the Astral Light. It is in this light that the forms of those 
no longer on earth are evoked, and by its means are accom¬ 
plished the contested but veritable mysteries of necromancy. 
When summoned by an illuminated reason, these forms are 
harmoniously manifested; summoned by folly, they appear 
disorderly and monstrous. 

The Astral Light was the instrument of the omnipotence 
of Adam, and afterwards became that of his punishment, 
being disturbed by his fall, which intermingled an impure 
reflection with those primitive images that composed, for his 
still maiden imagination, the book of universal knowledge. 
The fall of Adam, according to the initiators, was an erotic 
intoxication which rendered his generation the slave of the 
fatal light; all amorous passion is a whirlpool of this light 
which draws us towards the abyss of death. 

The Great Magic Agent, when subordinated to a blind 
mechanism and proceeding from centres automatically pro¬ 
duced, is a dead light which works mathematically according 
to given impulses or necessary laws. On the contrary, the 
human light is only fatal to the ignorant; it is subject to the 
intelligence, subordinate to the imagination, and dependent 
on the will of man. It is a compound agent, natural and 
divine, material and spiritual; ever active, ever rich in she, 
ever alive with ravishing dreams and luxurious images ; it may 
be called, in a certain sense, the Imagination of Nature, as 
we have said. Blind in itself, and subordinated to every will 
either for good or evil, this circulus always renewing an uncon¬ 
querable life which causes vertigo in the imprudent, this 


DOCTRINES OF OCCULT FORCE 


73 


universal seducer, conveys light, yet propagates darkness ; 'it 
may be named equally Lucifer and Lucifuge; it is a serpent 
but also a nimbus ; it is of the nature of fire, but it may belong 
equally to the torments of hell and to the incense-offerings 
dedicated to Heaven. To master it, we must, like the pre¬ 
destined woman, set a foot upon its head. 

The Astral Light is the key of all dominion, the secret of 
all powers, the universal glass of visions, the bond of sympathies, 
the source of love, prophecy, and glory, the instrument of 
thaumaturgic art and of divination. To know how to master 
this agent so as to profit by and to direct its currents is to 
accomplish the magnum opus, to be master of the world, and 
the depositary even of the power of God. The absolute secret 
of this direction has been possessed by certain men, and can 
yet be recovered—it is the Great Magic Arcanum ; it depends 
on an incommunicable axiom, and on an instrument which is 
the great and unique Athanor of the Hermetists of the highest 
grade. All magic science consists in the knowledge of this 
secret. To know it and dare to make use of it is human 
omnipotence; to reveal it to an outsider is to lose it ; to 
reveal it to a disciple is to abdicate in favour of such disciple, 
who, from that moment, has the right of life and death over 
his initiator, and will certainly kill him for fear of dying himself. 
(This has nothing in common with deeds defined as murder in 
criminal legislation; practical philosophy, the basis of ordinary 
laws, denies the facts of bewitchment and occult influences.) 

The Great Magic Agent has four properties—to dissolve, 
to consolidate, to quicken, and to moderate. These four 
properties, directed by the will of man, can modify all phases 
of Nature. In making use of the term fluid in connection 
with this force, we employ a received expression, but we are 
far from determining that the latent light is a fluid; every¬ 
thing, on the contrary, leads us to prefer the system of 
vibrations, in the explanation of this phenomenal force. 
However this may be, the coming synthesis of chemistry will 
probably lead our physicists to a knowledge of the universal 
agent, and then what will hinder them from determining the 
strength, number, and direction of its magnets ? A complete 
revolution in science will follow, and we shall return to the 
transcendent magic of the Chaldeans. 


74 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


V.—Magical Equilibrium. 

The universe is balanced by two forces which maintain it 
in equilibrium, those of attraction and repulsion. These forces 
exist alike in physics, philosophy, and religion. They produce 
equilibrium in physics, criticism in philosophy, and progressive 
revelation in religion. The ancients represented this mystery 
by the strife of Eros and Anteros, by the struggle of Jacob 
with an angel, and by the equilibrium of the golden mountain, 
which the gods on one side and the demons on the other hold 
balanced by means of the symbolic serpent of India. It is 
also represented by the two cherubim of the ark, by the two 
sphinxes of the chariot of Osiris, and by the two seraphim, 
one black and one white. Its scientific reality is proved by 
the phenomena of polarity, and by the universal law of 
sympathies and antipathies. 

In the soul of the world, which is the universal solar agent, 
there is a current of desire and a current of wrath. All 
motion and life consist in the extreme tension of these two 
forces or principles of universal equilibrium, which are not 
contrary, though in apparent opposition, for supreme wisdom 
opposes them one to another. The Great Magic Agent sub¬ 
sists then by two forces, one of attraction and one of repul¬ 
sion, whence Hermes says that it is continually ascending and 
descending. By this two-fold force all is created and pre¬ 
served. It is at once substance and motion; the inherent 
power which originates its movement is called magnetism, 
and the movement itself is an uprolling and unrolling which 
are consecutive and unlimited, or rather simultaneous and 
perpetual in spiral lines of opposite motions, which never 
come into collision. It is the same movement as that of the 
sun which draws and repels at one time all the planets of his 
system. 

Equilibrium is the result then of two forces, but if these 
were absolutely and permanently equal, equilibrium would be 
immobility, and consequently the negation of life. Move¬ 
ment is the result of alternated preponderance. The impulse 
given to one plate of a balance determines necessarily the 
motion of the other. Thus contraries act upon contraries by 
correspondence and analogical connection throughout all 


DOCTRINES OF OCCULT FORCE 


75 


Nature. All life is composed of an outbreathing and an 
inbreathing; creation is the supposition of a shadow to serve 
as a limit to light, of a vacancy to serve as space for the 
plenitude of being, of a fecundated passive principle to 
support and realize the potency of the active and generative 
principle. All nature is bi-sexual, and the movement which 
produces the phenomena of death and life is a continual 
generation. To understand the law of this exchange, to know 
the alternative or simultaneous proportion of all opposite 
forces, is to possess the first principles of the Great Magic 
Secret, which constitutes true human divinity. Scientifically, 
the diverse manifestations of universal motion may be appre¬ 
ciated by electrical or magnetic phenomena. Electrical 
phenomena above all reveal materially and positively the 
affinities and antipathies of certain substances. The union of 
copper with zinc, the action of all metals in the galvanic pile, 
are perpetual and irrecusable revelations. Let the physicists 
seek and find out, the Kabbalists will explain the discoveries 
of science. 

Equilibrium is order, and motion is progress; the science 
of equilibrium and of motion is the absolute science of 
Nature; it conducted the initiates to that of universal gravi¬ 
tation about the centres of life, heat, and light. By its 
means man can produce and direct natural phenomena 
through a continual self-elevation towards a higher and more 
perfect intelligence than his own. 

The alternate use of contrary forces—warmth after cold, 
mildness after severity, affection after anger—is the secret 
of perpetual motion and the prolongation of power; this 
is instinctively felt by coquettes, who cause their lovers to 
pass from hope to fear and from joy to sorrow. To operate 
always on the same side and in the same manner is to 
overload one side of a balance, and the complete destruc¬ 
tion of equilibrium will soon result. Everlasting caressing 
quickly engenders satiety, disgust, and antipathy, in the 
same way that constant coldness or severity alienates and 
discourages affection in the end. In alchemy a fire which 
is continually the same, and burns without intermission, 
calcines the first matter and sometimes causes the hermetic 
vase to explode; it is necessary to substitute at regular 


7 6 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


intervals the heat of lime or mineral manure for that of 
fire. And thus in magic the works of wrath or rigour 
must be tempered by operations of benevolence and love, 
while if the Magus should keep his will fixed always in 
the same direction and in the same manner, great fatigue 
and a species of moral impotence would very soon result. 
The Magus should not, therefore, live exclusively in his 
laboratory, amidst his Athanor, his elixirs, and his pantacles. 
However consuming may be the glance of that Circe called 
occult power, we must be able to point to it when neces¬ 
sary the sword of Ulysses, and remove in time from our 
lips the chalice which she offers us. A magical operation 
should invariably be followed by a rest of equal duration 
and an analogous diversion, but one contrary in its object. 
To strive continually against Nature, so that we may over¬ 
come and dominate it, is to endanger both life and reason. 
Paracelsus ventured to do so, but even in the midst of such 
a struggle he made use of equilibrated forces, and opposed 
the intoxication of wine to that of the intellect; then he 
conquered drunkenness by bodily fatigue, and bodily fatigue 
by fresh intellectual occupation. So was Paracelsus a man 
of miracles and inspiration, but he consumed his life in this 
devouring activity, or rather he rapidly wore out and rent 
its envelope. Men like Paracelsus can use and abuse without 
fear of anything—they well know that they can no more die 
than they can grow old. 

Nothing disposes us for joy more than grief, and nothing 
is nearer to grief than joy. So an ignorant operator is 
astonished that he invariably reaches other results than he 
proposed himself, because he knows neither how to cross 
nor alternate his action; he wishes to bewitch his enemy, 
and he makes himself ill and wretched. He wishes to 
make himself loved, and he consumes himself with desire 
for women who scorn him ; he wishes to manufacture gold, 
and he exhausts his last resources; his torment is eternally 
that of Tantalus, the water always flowing back when he 
stoops down to drink. 

To dominate the circle of the Astral Light, we must 
succeed in getting beyond the reach of its currents, that is, 
we must attain self-isolation. The torrent of universal life, 


DOCTRINES OF OCCULT FORCE 


77 


which is represented in religious dogmas by the expiatory 
fire of hell, is the instrument of initiation, the enemy to be 
overcome. It is this which brings to our evocations and to 
Goetic conjurations so many larvae and phantoms; therein 
are preserved all those forms which by their fantastic and 
fortuitous assemblage people our nightmares with such 
abominable monsters. To allow one’s self to be carried away 
by the drift of this whirling stream, is to fall into abysses of 
madness more frightful than those of death; but to chase 
the shadows of this chaos and endow them with the perfect 
forms of thought, is to be a man of genius, is to create, is 
to have triumphed over hell! The Astral Light directs 
the instincts of animals, and does battle with the intelli¬ 
gence of man, which it tends to pervert by the luxury of 
its reflections and the deception of its images; its fatal and 
necessary action is rendered still more calamitous by the 
elementary spirits and souls in pain, whose restless wills 
seek sympathies in our weaknesses, and tempt us less with 
the intention of destroying us than with the desire to win 
friends. 

To accomplish isolation from the Astral Light, it is in¬ 
sufficient to clothe ourselves in the woollen mantle of 
Apollonius; 1 we must, above all, impose absolute serenity 
on mind and heart; we must issue from the realm of passions 
and be convinced of our perseverance in the spontaneous 
acts of an inflexible will; as fatality is an inevitable con¬ 
catenation of effects and causes in a given order, so the will 
is the governing faculty of intelligent forces for the concilia¬ 
tion of the liberty of individuals with the necessity of things. 
A lucid will can act on the mass of the Astral Light, and, 
with the concurrence of other wills, which it absorbs and 
draws after it, can set great and irresistible currents into 
motion. Every intelligent projection of the will is a pro¬ 
jection of the human fluid or light. 

To dispose of the Astral Light, we must also understand 
its two-fold vibration, and the balance of forces which con¬ 
stitutes magical equilibrium—the senary of the Kabbalah. 
This equipoise, considered in its originating cause, is the 


1 See Note 8. 


78 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


will of God, in man it is liberty, in matter mathematical 
equilibrium. Equilibrium produces stability and perman¬ 
ence, liberty gives birth to immortality in man, and the 
will of God puts in operation the laws of eternal reason. 
Omnipotence is the most absolute liberty. Now absolute 
liberty cannot exist without perfect equilibrium. Magical 
equilibrium is, therefore, one of the first conditions of 
success in the operations of the science, and must be sought 
even in occult chemistry by the combination of opposing 
forces without their neutralization. By magical equilibrium 
is explained the grand and primeval mystery of the exist¬ 
ence and relative necessity of evil. Moral equilibrium is 
the concurrence of science and faith, distinct in their forces 
and joined in their action, to provide the mind and heart of 
man with that rule which is reason. 

VI.— The Magic Chain. 

The magnum opus in practical magic, after the education 
of the will and the personal creation of the Magus, is the 
formation of the magnetic chain, and this secret is truly 
that of the priesthood and the monarchy. To form the 
magic chain is to establish a magnetic current of ideas 
which produces faith and carries away a large number of 
wills in a given circle of active manifestations. The magnetic 
current becomes stronger in proportion to the extent of the 
chain, which, when well-formed, is like a whirlpool drawing 
in and absorbing all. The chain may be established in 
three manners—by signs, speech, and contact. It may be 
established by signs in causing some particular gesture or 
symbol to be adopted as the representation of a force. Thus 
all Christians communicate together by the sign of the 
Cross, masons by that of the square beneath a sun, magicians 
by the microcosm, made with the five extended fingers. 
Signs, once accredited and propagated, acquire force of 
themselves. The sight and imitation of the sign of the 
Cross sufficed in the first centuries to make proselytes to 
Christianity. The miraculous medal, as it is called, still 
performs in our own days a large number of conversions by 
the same magnetic law. The vision and illumination of the 


DOCTRINES OF OCCULT FORCE 


79 


y° un g Jew Alphonse de Ratisbonne is the most remarkable 
fact of this kind. Imagination is creative not only 
within us but without us, by means of our fluidic pro¬ 
jections. 

The magic chain formed by speech was represented 
among the ancients by the chains of gold which issue from 
the mouth of Hermes. Nothing equals the electricity of 
eloquence. Speech creates intelligence of the highest kind 
in the most grossly-natured crowds. Even those who are 
out of earshot comprehend by excitement, and are borne 
away with the mass. Peter the Hermit shook Europe by 
crying, “ God wills it! ” One single word of the Emperor 
electrified his army and made France invincible. Proudhon 
destroyed socialism with his famous paradox, “ Property is 
robbery! ” A chance word is often sufficient to overthrow 
an authority. Voltaire knew this well—Voltaire, who upset 
the world by sarcasms. So he, who feared neither pope, 
prince, parliament, nor Bastile, stood in dread of a pun. 
We are not far from accomplishing the desires of those men 
whose maxims we repeat. 

The third method of establishing the magnetic chain is 
by contact. Among persons who often come into communi¬ 
cation, the head of the current is soon revealed, and the 
strongest will does not fail to absorb the rest; the direct and 
positive contact of hand with hand completes the harmony 
of inclinations, and it is for this reason that it is a mark of 
sympathy and intimacy. Children, who are prompted in¬ 
stinctively by nature, form the magnetic chain when playing 
at Prisoner’s Base. Then gaiety circulates and laughter 
ripples. Round tables are also more favourable to festivity 
than those of any other shape. The great circle-dance of the 
Sabbath, which terminated the mysterious meetings of the 
adepts of the Middle Ages, was a magic chain, which united 
all in the same wishes and in the same acts; they formed it 
by standing back to back and holding hands with the face 
outside the circle, in imitation of those antique sacred dances 
which are still to be seen represented on the bas-relievos of 
old temples. The electric fur of the lynx, panther, and even 
the domestic cat, were attached to their clothes in imitation 
of the ancient bacchantes. Thence came the tradition that 


8o 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


the miscreants at the Sabbath each carried a cat hung from 
the girdle, and danced in this guise. 

The trough of Mesmer was an imperfect magic chain; 
several great circles of illuminati, in different northern 
countries, possess others more powerful. Even the society 
of certain Catholic priests, celebrated for their occult power 
and their unpopularity, is established after the plan, and in 
observance of the conditions, of the most powerful magic 
chains, and this is the secret of their strength, which they 
attribute solely to the grace or will of God, a common¬ 
place and simple solution of all the problems of powerful 
influence and enthusiasm. 

All enthusiasm propagated in a society by a series of 
communications and definite practices produces a magnetic 
current, and is conserved or augmented by that current, 
the tendency of which is to carry away, and often excite 
beyond measure, weak and impressionable people, nervous 
organizations, and temperaments disposed to hysteria or 
hallucinations. Such persons soon become powerful 
vehicles of magical force, and energetically project the 
Astral Light in the direction of the current itself; to oppose 
oneself under such circumstances to the manifestations of 
this force would be in some sense to struggle with fatality. 
When the young Pharisee Saiil, or Schol, threw himself, 
with all the fanaticism and obstinacy of a sectarian, across 
the stream of aggressive Christianity, he placed himself 
unconsciously at the mercy of the power he thought to 
combat, and so was overwhelmed by a formidable magnetic 
explosion, the effect of which was doubtless rendered more 
instantaneous through the combined help of a cerebral con¬ 
gestion and a sunstroke. We are acquainted with a certain 
sect of enthusiasts which people deride at a distance, but 
in which they enroll themselves when they come near it, even 
to assail it. We may go further: magic circles and mag¬ 
netic currents are established of themselves, and affect those 
whom they subject to their action according to fatal laws. 
Each one of us is drawn into a circle of affinities which is 
his world, by the influence of which he is controlled. Great 
circles often make great men, and reciprocally. There are 
no misunderstood geniuses, there are eccentric men, and the 


DOCTRINES OF OCCULT FORCE 81 

word seems to have been coined by an adept. The man of 
eccentric genius is one who seeks to form for himself a 
circle by striving against the central force of attraction 
inherent in established chains and currents. His destiny is 
to be broken in the struggle, or to succeed. What is the 
two-fold condition of success in such a case? A fixed 
central standpoint and a persevering circular action of 
initiative. The man of genius is one who has discovered a 
real law, and, consequently, possesses an invincible force 
of action and direction. He may die in his work, but that 
which he wishes will be accomplished in spite of his 
death, and frequently even on account of it, for death is a 
veritable assumption of genius. “When I shall be lifted 
above the earth,” said the greatest of the Initiators, “ I will 
draw all men unto me.” 

The law of magnetic currents is that of the movement of 
the Astral Light. This movement is always double, and 
reproduces itself in a contrary sense. A great action 
invariably occasions an equal reaction, and the secret of 
gigantic success is always in the foreknowledge of such 
reactions. So Chateaubriand, inspired with disgust at the 
revolutionary saturnalia, foresaw and prepared the immense 
success of his “Genius of Christianity.” To oppose one’s 
self to a current at the beginning of its revolution is to court 
being broken thereby, as was the great and unfortunate 
emperor Julian; to oppose one’s self to a current which 
has described the circle of its action is to take the lead of a 
contrary current. The great man is he who comes at the 
right time and knows how to innovate seasonably. Vol¬ 
taire, in the age of the Apostles, would have found no echo 
for his speech, and would perhaps have been nothing more 
than an ingenious parasite of the feasts of Trimalcyon. 
At the epoch we live in, all is ready for a fresh outburst of 
evangelical enthusiasm and Christian disinterestedness, 
precisely because of the universal disillusion, egotistic 
positivism, and public cynicism of the grossest interests. 
The success of certain books and the mystical tendencies 
of minds are no unequivocal symptoms of this general dis¬ 
position. While we restore churches and build new ones, 
the more do we feel the want of faith, and the more do we 


F 


82 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


hope for faith; the entire world expects once again its 
Messiah, and he will not tarry in coming. Let there be found, 
for example, a man highly placed by rank or by fortune—a 
pope, a king, or even a Jewish millionaire, and let this man 
publicly and solemnly sacrifice all his material interests for 
the good of humanity, let him become the saviour of the 
poor, the propagator, and even the victim, of doctrines of 
self-devotion and charity, and he will draw round him a 
vast concourse, while a complete moral revolution will be 
produced in the world. But the high position of the per¬ 
son is before all things requisite, for in these times of 
meanness and charlatanism, every Logos coming from the 
lower ranks is suspected of ambition and interested trickery. 
Ye, then, who are nothing, and do own nothing, hope 
not to be apostles or messiahs. If ye have faith, and 
would act in accordance with your faith, find first the 
means of action, which are the influence of rank and the 
prestige of fortune. Formerly, gold was made by science; 
to-day, science must be reconstructed by gold. That 
which was volatile has been fixed, and now we must fix 
the volatile; in other words, we have materialized spirit, 
and now we must spiritualize matter. The sublimest 
utterance is unheeded now-a-days, unless it be produced 
under the guarantee of some accepted name. What is the 
value of a manuscript? It is that of the author’s signature 
at the publisher’s. The firm of Alexandre Dumas et C ie , for 
example, represents one of the literary guarantees of our 
epoch; but it is of account only for its habitual pro¬ 
ductions, romances. Let Dumas invent a magnificent 
Utopia, or find an admirable solution of the religious 
problem, and his discoveries will only be considered the 
entertaining caprices of a novelist; no one will take them 
seriously, despite the European celebrity of the Panurge 
of modern literature. We are in the age of acquired 
positions; everyone’s worth is appraized in proportion 
to his social and commercial position. Unlimited liberty 
of speech has produced such a conflict of talk that no one 
inquires any longer what is said, but who has said it. 
To those therefore who ask me: “ If you possess the secret 
of unlimited successes and of the force which can change 


DOCTRINES OF OCCULT FORCE 


83 


the world, why do you refrain from using it ? ”—I reply : 
“ This knowledge has come to me too late for myself, and I 
have spent in its acquisition the time and the resources 
which would, perhaps, have enabled me to apply it. 
Illustrious men, rich men, great ones of this world, who are 
unsatisfied by what you possess, who are conscious in 
your hearts of a nobler and larger aspiration, will you 
become the fathers of the new world, the kings of a 
renovated civilization? A poor and obscure scholar has 
found the lever of Archimedes, and he offers it to you for 
the good of humanity alone, asking nothing whatever in 
return for it.” 

The printing press is an admirable instrument for the 
formation of the magic chain by the extension of speech. 
As a fact, no book is lost; writings find their way infallibly 
where they are meant to go, and the aspirations of thought 
attract speech. We have proved this a hundred times 
during the course of our initiation into magic; the rarest 
books have presented themselves to us without seeking as 
soon as they became indispensable. It is thus that we 
have discovered intact that universal science which 
numerous scholars have believed to be buried under 
several consecutive cataclysms; it is thus that we have 
entered into that great magic chain which began with 
Hermes or Enoch, and will only end with the world. So 
we have been able to evoke and bring before us the spirits 
of Apollonius, of Plotinus, of Synesius, of Paracelsus, of 
Cardan, of Cornelius Agrippa, and of many others more or 
less famous, but too religiously distinguished to be lightly 
named. We continue their sublime work, which others 
will take in hand after us, but unto whom will it be given 
to complete it ? 

VII. —The Great Magical Arcanum. 

There exists a principle and a rigorous formula which is 
the Great Arcanum. Let the wise man seek it not, for he 
has already found it; let the vulgar seek for ever, they will 
never attain it. This universal arcanum, the crowning and 
eternal secret of supreme initiation, is represented in the 


8 4 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Tarot by a young and naked girl who only touches the 
earth with one foot, who holds a magnetic rod in each hand, 
and appears to be running inside a crown which is supported 
by an angel, an eagle, a bull, and a lion. This figure is 
fundamentally analogous to the cherub of Ezekiel, and to 
the Indian symbol of Addhanari, corresponding to the 
Ado-nai of the prophet just mentioned. The comprehension 
of this figure is the key of all the occult sciences. The 
Great Magical Secret is represented by the lamp and poniard 
of Psyche, the apple of Eve, the fire stolen from heaven 
by Prometheus, and the burning sceptre of Lucifer, but 
also by the Cross of the Redeemer. It is the ring of 
Gyges, the Golden Fleece, the allegorical picture of Cebes, 
which is its most audacious demonstration. 1 It is also 
represented by the lingam, for the Great Arcanum is con¬ 
nected with the mystery of universal generation, and by 
the serpent pierced with an arrow, which formed the seal 
of Cagliostro. 

This secret is the kinghood of the sage, the crown of the 
initiate, whom it renders the master of gold and of light, 
which are fundamentally the same thing. By its means he 
solves the problem of the quadrature of the circle, directs 
the perpetual motion, and possesses the philosophers stone. 
This great and indicible arcanum was never referred to 
even among adepts; it is essentially unexplainable in its 
nature, and is destruction both to those who divine it and 
those who reveal it. It is that terrible secret of life and 
death which is expressed in the Bible by those formidable 
and symbolical words of the serpent, which was itself 
symbolical, I. Nequaquam moriemini, II. Sed eritis, 
III. Sicut Du, IV. Scientes bonum et malum. It is 
the secret of Nature herself, of the generation of angels 
and worlds, and of God’s omnipotence. It is the absolute 
knowledge of good and evil. “In the day that ye eat 
thereof, ... ye shall be as gods,” says the serpent. “Ye 
shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die,” 
replies Divine Wisdom. Thus good and evil flourish on 
the same tree and issue from the same root. Good per- 


1 See Note 9. 


DOCTRINES OF OCCULT FORCE 


85 


sonified is God ; evil personified is the Devil. To know 
the secret or science of God is to be God; to know the 
secret or science of the Devil is to be the Devil. To seek 
to be at once Deity and Satan is to concentrate in our¬ 
selves the most absolute contradiction, the most unchange¬ 
ably opposing forces; it is to strive to contain an infinite 
antagonism, it is to partake of poison which would quench 
suns and consume worlds, to assume the garment of 
Dejanira, and to doom ourselves to the swiftest and most 
terrible of deaths. Woe to him who wishes to know too 
much! If excessive and imprudent knowledge do not kill 
him, it will drive him mad. To eat of the fruit of the tree 
of knowledge of good and evil is to associate and assimilate 
good and evil one with another; it is to cover the radiant 
face of Osiris with the mask of Typhon, it is to raise the 
veil of Isis, and profane the sanctuary. The tree of 
knowledge has become the tree of death. For six thousand 
years the martyrs of Sinai have laboured and perished at 
the foot of this tree, that it might become once more the 
tree of life. 

The Great Magical Secret is the secret of the direction 
of the Great Magical Agent; it depends on an incommunic¬ 
able axiom, and on an instrument which is the supreme 
and unique Athanor of the Hermetists of the highest grade. 
When the adepts in alchemy speak of a great and unique 
Athanor of which all can make use, which is within the 
grasp of all, which all men possess without knowing it, 
they allude to the philosophic and moral alchemy. 1 A 
strong and resolute will can arrive in a short time at 
absolute independence, and we all possess the Athanor, the 
chemical instrument, by which that which is ethereal is 
separated from that which is gross, and the fixed is divided 
from the volatile. This instrument, complete as the world, 
and precise as mathematics themselves, is designated by 
the sages under the emblem of the Pentagram, the body of 
man and the absolute sign of human intelligence. The in¬ 
communicable axiom is kabbalistically enclosed in the four 
letters of the Tetragram, arranged in the following manner : 


1 See Note 10. 


86 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


in the letters of the words AZOTH and INRI kabbalistically 
written, and in the monogram of Christ as it is embroidered 
on the labarum, which Postel the Kabbalist interprets by the 

word Rota, from 
which the adepts 
have formed their 
Tarot. 

To understand 
the alternative or 
simultaneous pro¬ 
portion of the forces 
which produce 
equilibrium is to 
possess the first 
principle of the 
Great Magic Ar¬ 
canum, which con¬ 
stitutes true human 
divinity. It is the 
science of fire; 
everywhere we find 
the enchanter who 
pierces the lion 
and leads the 

serpents—-the lion is the celestial fire, and the serpents are 
the electrical and magnetic currents of the earth. It is to 
this great secret of the Magi that we must refer all the 
marvels of Hermetic Magic, which still declares in its 
traditions that the arcanum of the magnum opus consists in 
the government of fire. 

It is forbidden to us to speak more plainly, but we com¬ 
plete our revelation by the following tables ; these in their 
union will reveal to the neophyte the Grand Secret of Secrets. 

■ • 

0<H 
> •: 
go 

w r , 

£ g 



To live in union with 


The Providence 
of God. 

Light. 

Motion. 

Creation. 
















Theory of the G / 


DOCTRINES OF OCCULT FORCE 


87 


/ 


To know 


< 


To will 


To dare 


The truth 
of mystery, 
of life, 

in the spirit made visible 
by universal gravitation. 

Justice 
by sacrifice 
to! harmony 
and the progress 
of liberty. 

In proportion to 
blind faith 
in the equilibrium 
of substance modifiable 
by balancing. 


To be silent 

1 


on the reality 
of dogma, 
action 

of the soul which is perfectible 
by antagonism. 


God is 


r Charity, which is above all Being. 

Mystery, which is beyond all Science. 
Sacrifice, which transcends all Justice. 
Providence, which is above all Reason. 

, Perfection, which is beyond all Conception. 


Satan is Hatred and 


The void in opposition to all being. 
Ignorance in opposition to all know¬ 
ledge. 

Absurdity in opposition to all reason. 
Despotism in opposition to all 
justice. 

Falsehood in opposition to all truth. 









88 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


The Divine Paraclete 
is — Genius —■ En¬ 
thusiasm — Har¬ 
mony — Beauty — 
Rectitude. 


Intelligence, in its correspondence 
with Being. 

Progress, in its correspondence with 
knowledge. 

Love, in its correspondence with 
Justice. 

Wisdom, in its correspondence with 
Reason. 

Light, in its correspondence with 
Truth. 


The Four Characters of the Absolute. 

The identity of the idea with existence is—Truth. 
The identity of knowledge with existence is—Reality. 
The identity of the Logos with existence is—Reason. 
The identity of action with existence is—Justice. 

2 

"I 

& 

i 

n 

TIK VP1 TIK \T 





PART III 

THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 1 


I.—The Kabbalah. 

All religions have preserved the remembrance of a primeval 
book, written in emblems by the sages of the first centuries 
of the world, and the symbols of which, afterwards simplified 
and made common, furnished letters to the art of writing, 
characters to speech, and to occult philosophy its mysterious 
signs and pantacles. This book, attributed to Enoch, seventh 
lord of the earth after Adam, by the Hebrews ; to Hermes 
Trismegistus by the Egyptians; to Cadmus, the mysterious 
founder of the sacred city, by the Greeks, was the symbolical 
synthesis of primeval tradition, since called Kabbalah, or 
Cabala, from a Hebrew word which is the equivalent of 
tradition. 

This tradition wholly reposes on the single dogma of magic 
—that the visible is for us the proportional measure of the 
invisible. Now, the ancients having observed that equilibrium 
is the universal law of physics, and one which results from the 
apparent opposition of two forces, argued from physical to 
metaphysical equilibrium, and asserted that in God, that is, in 
the first living and active cause, two properties necessary to 
one another must be recognised—stability and movement, 
necessity and liberty, rational order and volitional autonomy, 
justice and love; consequently also, severity and mercy; and 
it is these two attributes which, in a certain sense, the Kab- 
balistic Jews personified under the names of Geburah and 

1 See Note n. 


89 



90 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Chesed. Above Geburah and Chesed dwells the supreme 
Crown, the equilibrating power, designated under the name 
of Malchut in the occult and Kabbalistic verse of the Pater¬ 
noster , which is found in the Greek text of the Gospel accord¬ 
ing to St Matthew, and in several Hebrew copies— -On <frj 
etfriv ( 3 a,<fl\eiu xcti ij duva/t/g, xal So£cc f s/g rod? aluvctg. v A/J jTiv. 
“ For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, world 
without end. Amen.” 1 

Malchut based on Geburah and Chesed is the Temple of 
Solomon, having Jakin and Bohas, unity and the duad, for 
its pillars ; it is the Adamic doctrine founded on the resig¬ 
nation of Abel for the one part, and on the labours and 
remorse of Cain for the other part; it is the demonstration 
of the universal lever sought in vain by Archimedes. But 
Geburah and Chesed, maintained in equilibrium by the Crown 
above and the Kingdom beneath, are two principles which 
may be viewed in their abstract nature or in their realization. 
As abstract or idealized, they take the superior names of 
Chocmah , wisdom, and Binah , intelligence. In their realiza¬ 
tion they are called stability and progress, that is, eternity and 
victory, Hod and Netsah. 

Such, according to the Kabbalah, is the basis of all religions 
and all sciences, the primal and immutable conception of 
things, a threefold triangle and a circle, the idea of the triad 
explained by the balance multiplied by itself in the domains 
of the ideal, then the realization of this idea in forms. Now, 
the ancients attached the first principles of this simple and 
sublime theology to the essential conception of numbers, and 
thus qualified all the figures of the primitive decade :— 

1. Keter. The Crown, the equilibrating power. 

2. Chocmah. Wisdom, equilibrated in its immutable order 

by the impulse of intelligence. 

1 The sacred word Malchut , employed for Keter , which is its Kabbalistic 
correspondent, and the balance of Geburah and Chesed repeated in the 
circles or firmaments, which the Gnostics called ^Eons, provide in this 
occult verse the keystone of the whole Christian temple. The Protestants 
have translated and preserved it in their New Testament, without discover¬ 
ing its supreme and wonderful significance, which would have unveiled 
to them all the mysteries of the Apocalypse; but it is a tradition of the 
Church that the revelation of these mysteries is reserved for the last days. 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 


9i 


3. Binah. Active Intelligence, equilibrated by Wisdom. 

4. Chesed. Mercy, Wisdom in its second conception, ever 

benevolent because it is strong. 

5. Geburah . Severity, necessitated by Wisdom itself and 

by Goodness. To permit evil is to prevent good. 

6. Tiphereth . Beauty, luminous conception of equilibrium 

in forms, intermediate between the Crown and the 
Kingdom, mediating principle between the Creator 
and creation. (What a sublime conception is to be 
found here of poetry and its sovereign priesthood !) 

7. Netzah. Victory, that is, the eternal triumph of intelli¬ 

gence and justice. 

8 . Hod. Eternity of the mind’s conquests over matter, of 

the active over the passive, of life over death. 

9. Jesod. The Foundation, that is, the base of every creed 

and truth; what in philosophy we call the Absolute. 

10. Malchut . The Kingdom, that is, the universe, entire 
creation, the work and mirror of Deity, proof of the 
Supreme Reason, formal consequence which obliges us 
to go back to virtual premisses, the enigma having God 
for its answer, that is, the Supreme and Absolute 
Reason. 

For the Kabbalists, God is therefore the Supreme Power or 
Crown (Keter), which rests on immutable Wisdom (Chocmah) 
and on creative Intelligence (Binah); in Him are Beneficence 
(Chesed) and Justice (Geburah), which are the ideal of Beauty 
(Tiphereth). In Him also are Activity ever victorious 
(Netzah) and the great eternal Rest (Hod). His will is a 
continual Procreation (Jesod), and His Kingdom (Malchuth) 
is the immensity peopled by worlds. 

These ten palmary notions attached to the ten first char¬ 
acters of the primeval alphabet, signifying at once numbers 
and principles, constitute what the masters in Kabbalah call 
the ten Sephiroth. The sacred Tetragram, traced in the 
following manner, indicates the number, source, and corre¬ 
spondence of the Divine names. Each sign has a crown of 
three rays, so that there are 72 rays in all, representing as 
many sacred names. It is to the name of Iotchavah, written 
with these twenty-four signs, crowned with a triple flower of 


92 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


light, that the twenty-four thrones in heaven and the twenty- 
four crowned ancients of the Apocalypse must be referred. 
In Kaballah the occult principle is called the Ancient, and 
this principle, multiplied and, as it were, reflected in secondary 



causes, creates its own images, that is, as many Ancients as 
there are diverse conceptions of his single essence. These 
images, less perfect as they recede from their source, cast in 
the darkness a final reflection or glimmer, which represents a 
horrible and disfigured Ancient, who is vulgarly called the 
devil. Thus an initiate has dared to say that “ the devil is 
God as He is understood by the wicked,” and another, in still 
stranger terms, that “ the devil is formed from the shreds of 
Deity.” We may resume and elucidate these exceedingly 
novel assertions, by remarking that in symbolism itself the 
demon is an angel cast out of heaven for desiring to usurp 
divinity. This belongs to the allegorical language of prophets 
and legendaries. Philosophically speaking, the devil is a 
human idea of divinity which has been surpassed and dis¬ 
possessed of heaven by the progress of science and reason. 
Moloch, Adramelek, Baal, were, among primitive Eastern 
peoples, personifications of the one God, but dishonoured by 
barbarous attributes. The God of the Jansenists, creating the 
majority of human beings for hell, and delighting in the 
eternal tortures of those He will not save, is a conception 
still more barbarous than that of Moloch ; thus the God of 
the Jansenists is already, for all wise and enlightened Chris¬ 
tians, a true Satan fallen from heaven. 

Sacred science includes two things, the doctrine or word, 
and the works which are the final form and fulfilment of the 
word. The science of signs and their correspondences is the 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 93 


introduction to the science of the doctrine. The Kabbalah is 
the science of signs and their correspondences. 

It is entirely comprised in what the masters term the thirty- 
two paths and the fifty gates. The thirty-two paths are thirty- 
two absolute and real ideas attached to the signs of the ten 
arithmetical numbers, as already seen, and the twenty-two 
letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The ideas which attach to 
the numbers, may be simplified as follows:—1. Supreme 
Power; 2. Absolute Wisdom; 3. Infinite Intelligence; 4. 
Beneficence; 5. Justice or Severity; 6. Beauty; 7. Victory; 
8. Eternity; 9. Fecundity; 10. Reality. As regards the 
Letters :— 

Aleph , Father. 

Beth , Mother. 

Ghimel\ Nature. 

Daleth , Authority. 

He , Religion. 

Vau, Liberty. 

Dzain , Property. 

Cheth , Division. 

Teth , Prudence. 

Jod , Order. 

Caph, Force. 

The number ten applied to the absolute notions of being in 
the divine, metaphysical, and natural orders, is thus repeated 
three times, and gives thirty for the resources of analysis ; then 
the addition of the syllepsis and synthesis—of the unity which 
begins by offering itself to the mind and that of the universal 
summary—produces the thirty-two paths. The fifty gates are 
a classification of all beings in five series of ten each, embrac¬ 
ing all possible branches of knowledge and including the whole 
encyclopaedia. 

According to the initiates of the Kabbalah, the Word, or 
speech, constitutes entire revelation, and hence the principles 
of the science must be sought in the signs which compose the 
primitive alphabet. Herein is one letter which has generated 
all others, and this is ' jod. There are two mother letters in 
mutual but analogous opposition—X Aleph and D Mem , or 
according to other authorities W Schin . There are seven 


Lamed, Sacrifice. 

Mem, Death. 

Nun, Reversibility. 

Samech, Universal Being. 
Phe, Immortality. 

Gnain, Equilibrium. 

Tsade, Shadow and reflection. 
Koph, Light. 

Resch, Gratitude. 

Thau, Synthesis. 


94 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


double letters 2 Beth , 3 Ghimel , “1 Daleth , 2 Caph , a Phe, 
1 Resch , and n Tau. The twelve remaining letters are 
simples. Unity is relatively represented by Aleph ; the triad 
by either Jod, Mem and Schin , or by Aleph , and Schin ; 

the septenary by Beth , Ghimel , Daleth , Caph , Phe , Resch , and 
Tau ; the duodenary by the remaining letters. The duodenary 
is the triad multiplied by the tetrad, and it thus enters into 
the symbolism of the septenary. Each letter represents a 
number, each group of letters a series of numbers; numbers 
represent absolute philosophical ideas ; the letters are abridged 
hieroglyphics, and here is their signification according to 
Bellarmine, Reuchlin, St Jerome, the Kabbalah Denudata , 
the Sepher Jetzirah , the Technica Curiosa of Schott, Picus de 
Mirandola, and other authors, especially in the collection of 
Pistorius:— 

The Mothers. Jod —absolute principle, productive being; 
Mem —spirit, or Jakin of Solomon ; Schin —matter, the pillar 
Bohas. 

The Doubles. Beth —reflection, thought, moon, angel 
Gabriel, Prince of Mysteries; Ghimel —Love, will, Venus, 
angel Anael, Prince of life and death ; Daleth —force, power, 
Jupiter, Sachiel, Melech, King of kings; Caph —violence, 
strife, toil, Mars, Samael Zebaoth, prince of hosts; Phe — 
eloquence, intelligence, Mercury, Raphael, prince of sciences ; 
Resch —destruction and regeneration, Time, Saturn, Cassiel, 
King of tombs and solitudes; Tau —truth, light, sun, Michael, 
King of the Eloim. 

The Simples are divided into four triads, classified under 
the four letters of the divine Tetragram—n 1 n *—the Jod , as 
already indicated, signifying the active principle of produc¬ 
tion ; the He representing the passive principle and the cteis ; 
the Vau being the union of the two, or the lingam; and the 
He final the image of the secondary producing principle, or 
passive reproduction in the world of effects and of forms. 
The twelve simple letters—n 1 T n D » b 3 D y V p—thus divided 
into three, reproduce the notion of the primitive triangle with 
the interpretation, and under the influence, of each of the 
letters of the Tetragram. 

It will be seen that the religious philosophy and doctrine 
of the Kabbalah are here indicated in a complete but veiled 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 95 


manner. Let us now question the allegories of Genesis:— 
In the beginning (Jod, unity of being) Hiloim, the equilibrated 
forces (Jakin and Bohas) made heaven (spirit) and earth 
(matter), in other words, good and evil, affirmation and 
negation. So opens the narrative of Moses. Then, as it is 
concerned with providing a place for man and a first sanctuary 
for his alliance with divinity, Moses speaks of a garden in the 
centre of which there is a single spring divided into four 
rivers (the Jod and the Tetragram), subsequently of two trees, 
one of life and one of death, planted near the spring. 
Thereby are the man and the woman, active and passive; the 
woman is in sympathy with death, and takes Adam with her 
in her fall; they are then driven from the sanctuary of truth 
and a cherub or bull-headed sphinx (compare the hieroglyphs 
of Assyria, India, and Egypt) is placed at the gate of the 
garden of truth to prevent profaners from destroying the tree 
of life. Hence mysterious doctrine, with all its allegories and 
terrors, succeeding the simple truth. The mystery of the 
necessary and alternate reactions of the two principles on 
each other is indicated afterwards by the allegory of Cain and 
Abel. Power avenges by oppression the seductions of weak¬ 
ness ; martyred weakness expiates and intercedes for power, 
condemned in consequence of its crime to disgrace and 
remorse. So is the equilibrium of the moral world revealed, 
so is established the basis of all prophecies and the fulcrum 
of all intelligent polity. To deliver up a force to its own 
excesses is to doom it to suicide. What was wanting in 
Dupuis for the comprehension of the universal religious 
doctrine of the Kabbalah was the knowledge of that magnifi 
cent hypothesis partly demonstrated and daily increasingly 
realized by the discoveries of science—universal analogy. 
Without this Key of transcendental teaching he beheld in all 
the gods nothing but the sun, the seven planets, and the 
twelve signs of the zodiac, nor did he discern in the sun the 
image of the Word of Plato, in the planets the seven notes of 
the celestial scale, and in the zodiac the quadrature of the 
triadic circle of all initiations. 

The Kabbalists, when multiplying the Divine Names, 
have joined them all either to the unity of the Tetragram 
or to the figure of the triad, or to the sephiric scale of the 


9 6 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


decade; they trace the scale of these Divine Names and 
Numbers in a triangle, which may be rendered as follows 
into Roman letters :— 

J 

J A 
S D I 
J E H V 
E L O I M 
SABAOT 
AR A RIT A 
ELVEDAAT 
ELIM GIBOR 
ELIM SABAOT 

The total of these Divine Names, formed from the single 
Tetragram, but outside of the Tetragam itself, is one of the 
bases of the Hebrew Ritual, and composes the occult force 
which Kabbalistic rabbins invoke under the name of Sem- 
hamphoras. The Jews, the depositaries of the tradition of 
Seth, the first tradition of the one only revelation, brought 
from Chaldea by Abraham, taught by Joseph to the Egyptian 
priesthood, garnered and purified by Moses, and concealed 
beneath the symbolism of the Bible, did not preserve it in 
all its purity, but allowed themselves to be carried away 
by the unjust ambitions of the posterity of Cain. They 
believed that they were a chosen people, and thought that 
God had given them truth as a patrimony, rather than 
confided it as a deposit which belonged to humanity at 
large. We find, in fact, in the Talmudists, beside the 
sublime traditions of the Sepher Jetzirah, sufficiently strange 
disclosures. Thus, they do not hesitate to attribute the 
idolatry of the nations to the patriarch Abraham himself, 
when they say that he transmitted his heritage to the 
Israelites, that is, he gave them the knowledge of the true 
Divine Names—the Kabbalah, in a word, was to be the 
legitimate and hereditary possession of Isaac—but they 
tell us that the patriarch gave presents to the children of 
his concubines, and by these presents they understand 
veiled dogmas and obscure names which soon became 
materialized and transformed into idols. False religions 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 97 


and their absurd mysteries, eastern superstitions and their 
destestable sacrifices, what a gift from a father to his despised 
family ! Was it not sufficient to drive Agar with her son 
into the desert ? Was it necessary, with their one loaf and 
pitcher, to give them a burden of falsehood to aggravate and 
empoison their exile ? 

Judaism is the most ancient, the most rational, and the 
truest of religions. Jesus, who proposed its reformation, never 
imposed its desertion on his disciples. Not being accepted 
by-the chiefs of the Synagogue, whose legitimate authority 
was uncontested by the Master of the Christians, his reform 
has become a heresy which has possessed the world. Mal¬ 
treated at first by the Jews, the Christians, when they had 
grown in strength, proscribed and persecuted the Jews with 
the most shameful and abominable fury. Their books were 
burned instead of studied, and the sublime philosophy of the 
Hebrews was lost for the Christian world. The apostles 
foresaw, notwithstanding, that the priesthood of the Gentiles 
would endure only for a time, and that the new faith would 
one day grow weak on the earth. Then, said they, salvation 
will once more arise for us out of Israel, and the great 
religious revolution which will bring us back to our fathers 
will be like a transition from death to life. The reason is 
that the Hebrews possess a science which St Paul suspected 
without knowing, while St John, initiated by Jesus, at once 
hid and revealed it under the grandiose hieroglyphics of the 
Apocalypse, borrowed, for the most part, from the prophecies 
of Ezekiel. The reason is that there exists a darksome and 
marvellous book called the Zohar or Splendour. This im¬ 
mense work, more voluminous than the Talmud, is at the 
same time only the development of a theogony comprised in 
a few pages and entitled the Sepher Dzeniouta. iThe Zohar 
is the key of the sacred books, but it also lays bare the depths 
and enlightens all the obscurities of the old mythologies and 
the sciences primitively hidden in the sanctuary. It is true 
that in order to make use of it the secret of this key must be 
known, and that, for even the acutest intelligences, if uniniti¬ 
ated in this mystery, the Zohar is absolutely incomprehensible 
and even unreadable. 

The glory of Christianity is that it called all men to the 

G 


9 8 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


truth, without distinction of peoples or castes, but not, how¬ 
ever, without distinction of intellect and virtue. “Cast not 
your pearls before swine,” said the Divine Founder of Christ¬ 
ianity, “ lest, trampling them under their feet, they turn and 
rend you.” 

The Apocalypse, or Revelation of St John, which contains 
all the Kabbalistic secrets of the doctrine of Jesus Christ, is a 
book no less obscure than the Zohar. It is hieroglyphically 
written in numbers and images, and the apostle appeals 
frequently to the intelligence of initiates. St John, the beloved 
disciple, and the depository of the secrets of the Saviour, did 
not, therefore, write to be understood by the multitude. 

The Sepher Jetzirah and the Apocalypse are the master¬ 
pieces of occultism; they contain more meanings than words, 
their expression is as figurative as poetry and as exact as 
mathematics. The Apocalypse epitomizes, completes, and 
surpasses all the science of Abraham and Solomon, as we 
shall prove in explaining the keys of the transcendent Kab¬ 
balah. The beginning of the Zohar is astonishing in the 
comprehensiveness of its outlines and the grand simplicity of 
its images. This is what we read :— 

“ The intelligence of occultism is the science of equilibrium. 
Forces which are produced without being balanced perish in 
the void. Thus perished the kings of the elder world, the 
princes of the giants. They have fallen like trees without 
roots, and their place is no more found. It was through the 
conflict of unequilibrated forces that the devastated earth was 
bare and unformed when the breath of God made itself a 
place in the heaven and spread out the mass of waters. All 
the aspirations of Nature were then directed towards unity in 
form, towards the living synthesis of equilibrated forces, and 
the forehead of God, crowned with light, rose over the vast 
sea, and was reflected in the inferior waters. His radiant eyes 
appeared, darting two shafts of light which intersected the 
rays of the reflection. The forehead of God and His two 
eyes formed a triangle in heaven, and the reflection formed a 
triangle in the waters. Thus was the number six revealed, 
which was that of universal creation.” 

The text, which would not be intelligible in a literal 
version, we here translate by interpretation. Moreover, 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 


99 


the author of the work takes care to intimate that the 
human form, which he attributes to God, is merely an 
image of his concept, and that God cannot be expressed 
by any thought, or by any form. Pascal has said that 
the Deity is a circle of which the centre is everywhere, and 
the circumference nowhere. 1 But how can a circle be con¬ 
ceived without a circumference ? The Zohar inverts this 
paradoxical figure, and would say boldly of Pascal’s circle 
that the circumference is everywhere and the centre nowhere. 
It is not, however, to a circle, but to a balance, that he 
compares the universal equilibrium of things. “ Equilibrium 
is everywhere,” he says, “and the central point where the 
balance is suspended may, therefore, be found everywhere.” 
We here find the author of the Zohar stronger and more 
profound than Pascal. 

The author of the Zohar continues his sublime dream. 
The synthesis of the Logos formulated by the human figure 
ascends slowly and issues from the water like the rising sun. 
When the eyes appeared, Light was created; when the mouth 
was revealed, spirit was created and speech was heard. The 
shoulders, arms, and breast come forth; then labour begins. 
The Divine Image with one hand puts back the waters of the 
sea, and with the other raises continents and islands. Ever 
it grows taller and taller; the generative organs appear, and 
all creatures begin to multiply. At length it stands erect, it 
sets one foot on the land and one on the sea, it is mirrored 
wholly in the ocean of creation, it breathes on its reflection, 
it calls its image into life. “ Let us make man,” it says, 
and man is created ! We know nothing so splendid in any 
poet as this vision of creation accomplished by the ideal 
type of humanity. Man is thus the shadow of a shadow, 
but he is the representation of divine power. He also can 
extend his hands from east to west, earth is given to him for 
a domain. Behold the Adam Kadmon, the primitive Adam 
of the Kabbalists ! Behold in what sense he is represented 
as a giant! Behold wherefore Swedenborg, pursued in his 
dreams by reminiscences of the Kabbalah, affirms that all 
creation is but a gigantic man, and that we are made in the 
likeness of the universe ! 


1 See Note 12. 



IOO 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


The Zohar is a Genesis of light, the Sepher Jetzirah is a 
scale of truths. Therein are explained the thirty-two absolute 
signs of speech, numbers, and letters; each letter reproduces 
a number, an idea, and a form, so that mathematics are 
applied to ideas and forms no less rigorously than to numbers 
in an exact proportion and by a perfect correspondence. By 
the science of the Sepher Jetzirah the human mind is grounded 
in truth and reason, and can take account of all possible 
progress of intelligence by the evolutions of numbers. The 
Zohar represents, therefore, absolute truth, and the Sepher 
Jetzirah provides the means of attaining, appropriating, and 
using it. 

The Kabbalists held all that resembled idolatry in detes¬ 
tation ; they gave, nevertheless, a human figure to God, as 
we have seen, but it was purely hieroglyphic. They held 
God to be the intelligent, loving, and living Infinite. He 
was for them neither the collection of existences, nor abstract 
existence, nor a philosophically definable Being. He is 
in all, distinct from, and greater than all; His very name 
is ineffable, and yet this name expresses only the human 
Ideal of His Divinity. What God is in Himself it is not 
given to man to understand. 

God is the absolute of faith; but the absolute'of reason is 
Being. Being of itself is, and because it is, its raiso?i d'etre 
is found in itself. It may be asked, “ Why does something 
exist ? That is, why does such or such a thing exist ? ” 
But it cannot be asked without absurdity, “ Why does Being 
exist ? ” This is supposing existence before existence. 
Reason and science prove to us that the modes of Being 
are equilibrated according to harmonious and hierarchic 
laws. Now, the hierarchy is synthetized by ascending and 
becoming more and more monarchic. Reason, neverthe¬ 
less, cannot pause at the conception of a single universal 
chief without being overwhelmed by the heights which she 
seems to leave above this supreme King; she is silent, 
therefore, and makes place for adoring faith. What is certain, 
even for reason and science, is that the idea of God is 
the greatest, holiest, and most serviceable of all human 
aspirations, and that on it morality reposes with its eternal 
sanction. In humanity this belief is, therefore, the most 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 


roi 


real of all the phenomena of Being, and were it false, 
Nature would be asserting what is absurd, the void would 
give expression to life, God would at once be and not be. 
It is to this philosophical and incontestible reality, called 
the idea of God, that the Kabbalists gave a name. All the 
characters of this name produce numbers, the hieroglyphs 
of its letters express all the laws and all the actualities of 
Nature. 

The Kabbalists write the Divine Tetragram in four chief 
ways—J H V H, which they do not pronounce but spell, 
Jod, he , vau , he , and we pronounce Jehovah, contrary to all 
analogy, for the Tetragram thus disfigured is composed of 
six letters— Adni, which we pronounce Adonai , meaning 
Saviour— Ahih, which we pronounce Eieie , signifying Being 
—finally, Agla, which is pronounced as it is written, and 
hieroglyphically encloses all the mysteries of the Kabbalah. 
In fact, the letter Aleph is the first of the Hebrew Alphabet; 
it expresses unity and represents the dogma of Hermes 
hieroglyphically. “That which is above is as that which is 
below.” This letter has, in fact, two arms, one of which 
points to earth and the other to heaven with a similar gesture. 
The letter Ghimel is the third of the alphabet; it ex¬ 
presses numerically the triad and hieroglyphically child-birth, 
fecundity. The letter Lamed is the twelfth; it is the ex¬ 
pression of the perfect cycle. As a hieroglyphical sign, it 
represents the circulation of the perpetual movement and the 
relation of the radius to the circumference. The letter Aleph 
repeated is the expression of the synthesis. Thus, the name 
Agla signifies unity, which by the triad accomplishes the 
cycle of numbers to return into unity; the fruitful principle 
of Nature which is one with unity; the primal truth which 
fertilizes science and directs it back to unity; syllepsis, 
analysis, science, and synthesis ; the three Divine Persons, 
who are one God; the secret of the magnum opus , that is, 
the fixation of the Astral Light by a supreme projection of 
will-power, which the adepts represented by a serpent trans¬ 
fixed by a dart, and forming therewith the letter Aleph; 
then the three operations—to dissolve, to evaporate, and to 
condense, corresponding to the three indispensable sub¬ 
stances—salt, sulphur, and mercury, all expressed by the 


102 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


letter Ghimel; then the twelve keys of Basilius Valentinus, 1 
expressed by Lamed; finally, the work accomplished con¬ 
formably to its principle, and reproducing the principle itself. 

Such is the origin of that Kabbalistic tradition which 
comprises all magic in a word, and all power in a single 
name. To know how to read and pronounce this word, that 
is, to understand the mysteries of and translate into practice 
these absolute branches of knowledge, is to have the key of 
prodigies, the science of Solomon, and the light of Abraham. 
To pronounce the word Agla we must turn to the East, that 
is, unite ourselves in intention and knowledge with Eastern 
tradition. We must not forget that, according to the Kab¬ 
balah, the perfect word is speech realized by acts, whence 
comes that expression frequently found in the Vulgate, facere 
verbum, in the sense of accomplishing an action. To pro¬ 
nounce the word Agla Kabbalistically, is therefore to undergo 
all the trials of initiation and fulfil all its works. 

Absolute science is in the knowledge of the divine names 
formed from the one name. The name of Jehovah is 
subdivided into seventy-two explanatory names which are 
called Schemhamphoras , or the name explained. The art of 
employing these names and finding therein the keys of 
universal science, is what Kabbalists have called the claviculce 
of Solomon. As a fact, at the end of the collection of 
evocations and prayers which bear this title, there are usually 
found seventy-two magic circles forming thirty-six talismans. 
This is four times nine, that is, the absolute number multi¬ 
plied by the tetrad. Each of these talismans bears two of 
the seventy-two names with the emblematic sign of the 
number, and of that one of the four letters of Jehovah’s name 
to which they correspond. It is this which gave rise to the 
four emblematic decades of the Tarot—the club represents 
the Jod; the cup, the He ; the sword, the Vau ; and the 
denier the final He. In the Tarot the complement of the 
ten is added, which synthetically repeats the character of 
unity. 

The popular traditions of magic declare that the possessor 
of the Clavicles of Solomon can converse with all orders of 


1 See Note 13. 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 103 

spirits and compel all natural forces into his service. Now, 
these Keys, several times lost and again re-discovered, are 
nothing more than the talismans of the seventy-two names, 
and the mysteries of the thirty-two paths symbolically repro¬ 
duced in the Tarot. By help of these signs, and by means of 
their combinations, which are as infinite as those of numbers 
or letters, we may, in effect, attain to the mathematical and 
natural revelation of all Nature’s secrets, and, consequently, 
enter into communication with the whole hierarchy of 
intelligences and genii. 

It is certain that the secrets of the supreme Kabbalah were 
lost to the Synagogue when Jesus Christ recovered them, as 
the Jewish author of the Sepher Toldos Jeschu avows. 
Catholic doctrine is wholly derived from it, but under how 
many veils and with what strange modifications ! The plur¬ 
ality of persons in the unity of God has issued from the three 
first letters of the Tetragram, the He having merely been 
taken for the Son to avoid the deification of the mother, who 
must continue human, and, in accordance with Postel’s pro¬ 
vision, has later on seemed to absorb all the honour of the 
other persons. In the Zohar we find the Divine mother, the 
second conception of the Elohim, co-operating in the 
creation, which would have been impossible without her. 
It is she who softens and moderates the severities of the 
paternal Jod ’ who opposes water to fire, mercy to anger. 
“ Fire,” say the authors of the Zohar, “sprang forth from the 
Divine Jod like a serpent, and would have consumed the 
earth in its embraces, when the Divine Mother (blessed be 
her name!) led forth the waters and poured the liberating 
waves upon the serpent’s burning head.” Here, recollecting 
that Mary in Hebrew means “the Sea,” or “the Salt of the 
Sea,” we understand why she is represented with the new 
moon beneath her feet, for the rabbins say that the moon is 
the image of the divine ctei's of the tetradic He, or maternal 
power of the Elohim, and we are no longer astonished at the 
immense influence imputed to a simple mortal, who by her 
immaculate conception goes back beyond the beginning of 
time. Her Son has given the honour of His birth to His 
mother, and the Mother of the Eternal Son should be eternal 
as He is. Everything in the Catholic cultus recalls the 


104 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


numbers of Pythagoras, the triad of Divine Persons, the 
tetrad of the Gospels, the septenary of the seven gifts of the 
Holy Spirit and of the Sacraments, the sacred decade of the 
Decalogue, and the duodenary of the patriarchs and apostles. 
The frightful and Manichaean creation of hell counterpoising 
heaven, is only an exaggerated realization of the equilibrating 
duad of Zoroaster, equilibrated, in the tradition of the Zohar, 
by the two ancients, one of whom is the shadow of the other, 
the Macroprosopus and the Microprosopus , the shadow of 
humanity veiling God, and the light of God illuminating 
humanity, so that God seems to be for us the celestial man, 
while man is as the god of earth. Thus, all apparent 
doctrinal absurdities conceal the lofty and primeval revela¬ 
tions of the wisdom of the ages, and this is the reason that 
Christianity, enriched by so many opulent inheritances, 
prevailed over dessicated and impoverished Judaism, which 
had even ceased to understand the allegories of its Ark and 
Golden Candlestick. But by just so much as the internal 
riches of the universal and Kabbalistic doctrine are beautiful 
and precious, so are the materialized interpretations, given in 
our own days to these mysteries, deplorable. To deny the 
ancient doctrine is easy, but it refutes denial by the very fact 
of its existence. What must be done, then, to overcome the 
Sphinx of modern times ? Its enigma must be explained and 
revealed to itself; all minds must be directed to that science 
which accounts even for the aberrations of faith, and a 
return must be made to the consciousness of a single 
revelation, permanent and universal in humanity. This 
revelation is analogy explained by the Logos; it is Nature 
unceasingly addressing herself to reason; it is the mathe¬ 
matical harmony of existences proving that the part is in 
proportion to the whole, and that the whole, necessarily 
indefinite in the absolute, necessitates, without explaining it, 
the hypothesis of infinity. 

It is in the vast field of this hypothesis that humanity 
unceasingly enlarges the circle of the sciences, and puts 
back, by the. conquests of knowledge, the limits of the 
kingdom of faith. Now, what becomes of faith in presence 
of this ever aggressive boldness? Faith is that confidence 
which impelled Columbus forward when America receded 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 105 

before him ; it is belief in the unknown portions of the 
grand totality, the existence of which is demonstrated by 
its known parts; it will be plainly seen that it can be no 
negation of reason, and that the object of faith being 
necessarily hypothetical in form, since knowledge alone can 
define, all definitions of it are a confusion of faith and science. 
The true act of faith consists, therefore, solely in the adhesion 
of our intelligence to the immoveable and universal reason, 
which excludes all monstrosity and falsehood from the 
domain of first causes. The reasonable being supposes 
necessarily the raison d'etre ; it is the absolute, it is the 
law; it is, because it is. God himself, in whatever manner 
He be conceived, cannot exist without raison detre ; only 
insanity will provide a personal, arbitrary, and unexplainable 
authority as the cause of immutable law. The impassible, 
unmerited, and irresponsible supremacy of God would be 
the highest of injustices, and the most revolting of absurdities. 
What, then, is Deity for us ? It is the undefined conception 
of a supreme personality. With dogmatic religions it is 
otherwise; for them God is the first and final definition of 
the hypothetical world; but so often as God is defined He 
is limited, and beyond His altars and cultus there dawn 
always on the unwearied aspirations of humanity, the formless 
altar of the coming worship, and the nameless inscription 
which the Athenians placed on the most divine and philo¬ 
sophical of their temples— Ignoto Deo. 


II.— Religion from the Kabbalistic Standpoint. 

The religious sentiment exists in man. Nature creates 
nothing without an end in view. Religion is therefore 
a real thing. What is, is! The religion of the Kabbalists 
is at once all hypothesis and certitude, for it proceeds by 
analogy from the known to the unknown. They recognise 
religion as a need of humanity, as an evident and necessary 
fact, and there alone for them is the divine, permanent, 
and universal revelation. They contest nothing which exists, 
but account for everything. So their doctrine, by clearly 
marking the line of eternal separation between science and 


io6 THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 

faith, gives the highest reason as a basis of faith, thus 
guaranteeing it a lasting and incontestable duration. The 
popular forms of dogma, which alone can vary and be 
destroyed by one another, follow afterwards; the Kabbalist 
is not shaken by so small a thing, and provides at once a 
reason for the most astonishing formulae of mysteries. 

The word God expresses an ideal unknown in its essence, 
but well known by the various notions which men conceive 
of it. Above all these more or less adequate conceptions 
rules that of a supreme intelligence and primal power. 
The abstract notion of the mathematical laws which govern 
universal motion, saddens the greater number of minds, 
who, seeing human liberty involved, in a certain sense, in 
the immense machine of the universe, find this machine, 
however grand it be, inferior to man, if it have no self- 
consciousness. There the universal sentiment is arrested, 
and phantasy does the rest. Some make God uni-personal, 
others multi-personal; it is no less certain that, for science, 
God is the most probably inevitable hypothesis of a supreme 
conscience in the eternal mathematics. We say most 
probably inevitable, out of respect to the liberty of con¬ 
science of sincere atheists, but the Kabbalah, which is the 
mother of the exact sciences, admits of no doubt when it 
authorizes a hypothesis; and starting from the very exist¬ 
ence of the religious sentiment, and from the name which 
signifies in all nations and for all men this invisible and 
infinite Being, the Kabbalah, we say, would conclude out 
of hand His necessary existence, because the Word attests 
the thing, as the shadow the body. 

Man can only conceive of God as an infinite, or, rather, 
indefinite man, for whence would he obtain the terms of 
comparison for a different image of Divinity? It follows 
that whatsoever tends to define and personify God falls 
necessarily into anthropomorphism, and, consequently, into 
idolatry. For this reason the Kabbalists have distinguished 
the essence of Deity from the conception of Him in man, 
and to the human idea alone do they give a name, that of 
Jehovah or Adonai. As to the supreme reality, it is for 
them the non ens, the inappreciable, the unspeakable, the 
undefined. Estimating, moreover, as we have said, the 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 107 

Divine actualities by their mirage or shadow in the human 
mind, they consider that this shadow or mirage presents 
to us all the divine notions in an inverted way, and that 
science should reverse them to reach the harmony which 
results from the analogy of contrary things. This judgment 
by antithesis on vulgar notions is one of the greatest secrets 
of the Kabbalah, and one of the occult keys of exegesis. 
This key is represented by the two triangles, one upright 
and the other inverted, which form the six-pointed star of 
the mysterious seal of Solomon. Each of these two triangles, 
taken separately, represents an incomplete, and therefore 
radically false, conception of the Absolute ; truth is in the 
union of the two. 

Let us apply this to the interpretation of the Bible. 
Open it at the first chapter of Genesis, for example. We 
there find the history of the creation of the world in six 
days. Invert the sense, take the antithesis, and we shall 
have the creation of God in six nights. This requires 
explanation. God, says Genesis, made man in His own 
image, and philosophy proves that man also makes God 
after his own likeness. Well, the philosophical fact serves 
as basis to the theurgic affirmation, by virtue of the analogy 
of contrary things. The observed progress of the human 
mind, seeking to define God, revealed to Moses, by antithesis 
and by the analogy of contraries, the successive periods of 
creation. In two words, being unable to judge of Deity 
except by its reflection in the human mind, Moses followed 
all the outlines of that reflection and mentally reproduced 
them. Thus he obtained his cosmogony by the study of 
universal theology. 

The first chapter of Genesis Kabbalistically inverted 
gives a luminous summary of universal theogony and its 
progressive growth in the human mind. Isolated, this 
summary would seem irreligious, and would represent 
divinity as a fiction of man, while the isolated text of Moses 
resembles a fable and distorts reason. , But the two united, 
the star formed with the double triangle, we shall be 
astonished at the truth and light we shall discover. The 
text in the Bible can be read by all, the inversion we give 
as follows, so far as the first chapter is concerned. 


io8 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


The Occult Genesis.—Chapter I. 

From the beginning the vastness of heaven and the extent 
of earth have created in man the idea of God. 

But this conception was unformed and vague ; it was a veil 
of darkness over an immense apparition, and the spirit of 
man brooded upon his conceptions as over the face of the 
waters. 

And man said : Let there be a supreme intelligence. And 
there was a supreme intelligence. And man saw that this 
idea was good, and he distinguished the spirit of light from 
the spirit of darkness; and he called the spirit of light, God, 
and the spirit of darkness, the devil; and there was a realm 
of good, and a realm of evil. This was the first night. 

Man also said : Let there be an impassable boundary 
between the dreams of heaven and the realities of earth, 
And man made a division, and he separated the things which 
were above from the things which are below, and so it 
was arranged. And man called his imaginary separation, 
heaven, and the evening and the morning were the second 
night. 

And man said: Let us divide in our worship the mass 
of vapours from the dry vault of heaven. He gave to the 
heaven which was without water, the name of father ; to the 
mass of vapours, the name of mother. And man saw that 
this was good. And he said : Let us make all the vegetation 
of symbols, where doctrines issue from one another, as the 
seed from the herb, and the herb from the seed, to germinate 
in heaven. 

Let us plant the Edenic apple, with its mysterious and 
ever-renewing fruits. And the sky brought forth symbols like 
grass, and mystic trees flourished. And man saw that this 
was good. And the evening and the morning were the third 
night. 

Man also said: Let there be mystical stars in my sky, and 
let them divide knowledge and ignorance, day and night! 
And it was so done ; and man made two splendid divinities; 
a greater for the initiated, and a lesser for the common 
people, and small gods numerous as the stars. And he 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 109 

placed them in the asylum of his sky, to rule the earth and to 
divide knowledge and ignorance. And man saw that this 
was good, and the evening and the morning were the fourth 
night. 

Man also said : Let the clouds bring forth flying dragons 
and fantastic animals. And the clouds brought forth monsters 
to terrify children, and winged devils. And man blessed 
them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill heaven and 
earth; and man set in turn upon his altars all the animals 
of earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth 
night. 

Man then adored animals and reptiles of every kind; and 
having seen that this throve with him, he said : Let us make 
a god to our own image and likeness, and let him be King of 
the mythological leviathans, of the celestial monstrosities, 
and the colossi of hell. And man created God to his own 
image and likeness, and said to Him: Grow and multiply 
Thy images : I give thee the empire of heaven and the 
domain of earth. And it was so done; and man saw all 
that he had created, and it was very good. And there was 
an evening, and there was a morning, which were the sixth 
night. 

This occult Genesis was thought out by Moses before 
writing his own, and here is how he must have reasoned. 
Matter is the external form of mind, and it reacts on in¬ 
telligences. Harmony results from the analogy of these two 
contraries. In the mind of man, which wars against matter, 
the laws of progress are analogous to those of progress and 
motion in matter itself. Therefore, the creation of the world 
outside of God must be parallel to that of the conception of 
God in man. And it is thus that, taking for numerical basis 
the sacred triad and its duplication, which signifies its reflec¬ 
tion, Moses wrote his cosmogony of six days, analogous to 
the six great nights of human initiation into all religious 
mysteries. This key of revelation is also that of all religious 
practices, and of their influence on the civilizations and 
destinies of men. We will explain our meaning. The action 
of thought on form and the reaction of form on thought being 
given, it must be concluded that exterior objects act on man, 


I IO 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


or react on him as much as he can act on them. Man, 
following his divine ideal, builds a temple, then he is in¬ 
fluenced by the temple he has made, and cannot enter it 
without remembering his God. The vague ideal has taken a 
shape, a body, and it becomes a visible and palpable reality. 
Must it be said that man deceives himself? Yes, doubtless, 
in all defects that the form attributes to his ideal, but not 
in all that it realizes of perfection and truth. Thus, religion 
has made forms of worship which create that piety which is 
the strength of religion. Religious ceremonies are transcen¬ 
dental Kabbalistic practices, and proscribed magic would not 
be so dangerous except by the power of which it can avail 
itself in imitating them. 

Religious observances are the Word in action. The man 
who performs them is, with or without his will, taken posses¬ 
sion of by a doctrine when he fulfils its rites. If Julian could 
forsake Christianity, it was because he never practised it of 
his free will, and because also he was secretly addicted to the 
Hellenic ritual. The Church has full knowledge of this power, 
and it is for this reason that she less apparently concerns her¬ 
self in interior sentiments than in exterior observances. Con¬ 
fess, she says, and go to Church; the rest will come of itself. 

It is certain that the devotees of Black Magic evoked and 
saw the devil, thus giving form and actuality to the ideal of 
absurdity itself. The authentic reports of numerous magical 
prosecutions do not permit us to doubt this. The exaltation 
which produces vision is contagious, and propagates itself with 
the rapidity of electricity in all those whose mental strength 
does not protect them against this natural influence. Thus 
the so-called spiritual phenomena in America are to be 
accounted for. So also all serious theologians agree in 
declaring that a vision proves nothing in doctrinal matters. 
Such a declaration of the masters should warn the uninitiated 
against supernatural revelations and prophecies based on 
visions. 1 The great and unhappy Emperor Julian had the 
misfortune to believe sincerely in his gods on the faith of the 
apparitions procured him by Jamblichus and Maximus of 
Ephesus. This completely Jewish or Christian credulity 
placed him at the mercy of new enthusiasms, stronger and more 
1 See Note 14. 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 


I T I 


widespread than his own, and he was overwhelmed and borne 
away by their current. 

There is a story told of St Louis, the king, which does him 
infinite credit. He was sought out one day in great haste and 
invited to witness a miracle occurring at that time in his 
chapel. Christ had become visible in the Host, and had 
manifested His presence before a multitude of witnesses. 
“ Why should I go ? ” asked St Louis; “ I believe in the real 
presence of Jesus Christ in the sacrament because I do not 
see it; if I saw it, I should be unable to believe any longer.” 

A public miracle is a proof of exaltation, and, consequently, 
of collective folly; it produces faith only as the pest produces 
the pest. The folly of the Cross, as St Paul calls it, was 
merely a homeopathic remedy for the riotous and luxurious 
insanities of the age of the Caligulas and Neros. The fasts of 
the Stylites were only a deliberately unreasonable reaction 
from the suppers of Claudius and the feasts of Trimalcyon. 
St Anthony protested against Petronius, and the unclean 
animal which served him for a dog was the living satyr of 
Roman morals during the Decline. So Seneca, at the feasts 
of Nero, praised and envied the austerities of Diogenes, and 
St Anthony in his desert dreamed epics of intoxication and 
debauchery which shamed the inventions of Tigellinus. 
Harmony results from the analogy of contraries. 

Exaltation is produced by physical means, which are—i, 
Continued and periodical tension of the mind. 2, Fasting. 
3, Images and pictures. 4, Music and chants analogous to 
the object of enthusiasm. 5, Fumigations and perfumes. 
Who then will be astonished if pious people are subject to 
revelations and ecstacies ? But it is also true to say that by 
the same means we may attain to the intuitive vision of 
Kichatan, Pimpocau, or Parabavastu, see even the hideous 
phantom which is the synthesis of all false Gods, Satan. 
From this it follows that forms of worship are all essentially 
magical, as we have said, and that religious practices are a 
means of producing ecstacy; now the natural phenomena of 
ecstacy are what the vulgar habitually look on as miracles. 
These phenomena are—1, Insensibility to all pain and injury. 
2, More or less lucid vision or somnambulism. 3, Extempore 
eloquence and knowledge infused by over-excitement and by 


11 2 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


direct communication with the common medium of the 
thoughts of others. 4, A fluidic superabundance capable of 
operating extraordinary effects, such as the immediate com¬ 
munication of ecstacy in all its phases, instantaneous cure of 
certain affections, apparent suspension of some natural laws, 
that of gravity, for example, which daily happens in America 
and elsewhere, when tables are seen to rise up and remain 
suspended in the air while no one is touching them. Similar 
phenomena are known to have been produced at the time of 
the convulsionaries of the cemetery of St Medard. Ecstatic 
women were lifted from the earth ; even the foes of Jansenism 
bear witness to the fact, though they attribute the miracle to 
the devil, and cite in proof the immodesty of such aerial 
ascensions, where, as it is asserted in the controversies of the 
time, women’s clothes were raised and rolled up of themselves 
contrary to all physical laws, during the ascensional motion 
of the convulsionary’s body. Does not this complication of 
the miraculous prove the presence of a natural agent, of a 
motive power brought into action by the over-excitement not 
only of one person but of a whole circle of enthusiasts? 
Nature is invariably the producer of miracles; fanaticism 
profits by them, science explains them ; it is for wisdom to 
make use of them for the triumph of reason and progress. 

III.— Kabbalistic Classics—The Talmud and 
Talmudists. 

The importance of the Talmud, denied with derision by the 
ignorance of Christians and blindly sustained by the supersti¬ 
tion of the vulgar among the Jews, rests entirely on the great 
and immutable truths of the sacred Kabbalah. The Talmud, 
the name of which is composed of the sacred Tau and a 
Hebrew word which means instruction, contains seven distinct 
parts which science should be careful not to confound—Thfe 
Mischna or Talmud of Jerusalem, the two Ghemara or 
Talmud of Babylon, the Thosphata or additions, the Berichta 
or appendices, the Maraschim or allegorical commentaries, 
and the Haggada or traditional histories. 

The Talmudists, compilers of this multifarious work, 
belonged to three classes of rabbins, whose successive autho- 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 113 

rity has preserved, interpreted, and annotated the primitive 
texts. These were the Tenaimes or initiates, the Amoraimes 
or vulgar disciples of the former; then came the Massoretes 
and the Chachamines, blind preservers of texts, systematic cal¬ 
culators of signs, the absolute value of which they did not 
know, doctors who no longer saw the Kabbalah save in some 
mathematical diversions of a misunderstood Gematria and an 
inadequate Temurah. With the Jews, as with the Christians, 
the tendency of the official church or synagogue has always 
been directed towards the materialization of signs, to substitute 
the hierarchy of temporal influence for the hierarchy of know¬ 
ledge and virtue. Thus, previously to Christ’s advent, pro¬ 
phecy, representing initiation and progress, had always been 
in open conflict or secret hostility with the priesthood; so also 
the pharisaism of the time of Jesus persecuted the new 
Essenian school of which He was the founder, and opposed 
itself later on to the more liberal teachings of the disciples of 
Hillel and Chamai. Later still, the Kohanimes were again 
hostile to the initiated Israelites of the Alexandrian school, 
and the synagogue of Chachamines and Massoretes only left 
the Kohanimes or excellent masters in peace, thanks to an 
occultism which was doubtless one of the secret roots of 
Masonic institutions during the darkness of the Middle Ages. 
It is not, then, from the official synagogue that we must 
demand the keys of the supreme Kabbalah and the concealed 
sense of the Talmud; the present representatives of ancient 
Biblical theology will tell you that Maimonides, the great light 
of Israel, not only was no Kabbalist, but regarded the study 
of the Kabbalah as useless or dangerous. Maimonides, not¬ 
withstanding, venerated the Talmud, and thus resembled the 
Utopians in mysticism who reject Christianity while adoring 
the Gospel. Never at any period have inconsistencies dis¬ 
mayed the human mind ! 

If the Talmud had not been originally the great Kabbalistic 
key of Judaism, its existence, and the traditional veneration 
of which it is the object, would be incomprehensible. In 
fact, a text of the Israelite catechism imposes on all the 
Jewish faithful the consideration of the Talmud as the 
classical and authentic storehouse of Jehovah’s secret laws, 
reserved by the wisdom of Moses for the traditional teaching 

H 


IT4 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


of the sacerdotal tribe. We know, besides, that the body of 
this occult philosophy is positively what all serious initiates 
have considered the harmony of the Kabbalah. So the key 
of this science, which alone opens all the secret doors and 
enables us to penetrate all the profundities of the Bible, may 
be equally adapted to the mysteries of the Talmud—another 
conventional Bible fabricated only for testing the biblical keys. 
For this reason the Talmudists, anxious to show the allegorical 
sense of certain absurd passages in the sacred books, surpassed 
this absurdity itself, and gave as the explanation of an im¬ 
probable text a completely impossible commentary. Here is 
an example of their method :— 

The author of the allegorical book of Job represents blind 
force under the emblem of two monsters, one of whom is 
terrestrial and the other marine, and he names them respec¬ 
tively Behemoth and Leviathan. Doubtless, it is not without 
a Kabbalistic meaning that he employs the number 2, or the 
duad, for blind force is always in competition with itself through 
the fatal or providential law of equilibrium, and just as, in the 
eternal generation of things, harmony results from the analogy 
of contraries, so in titanic excess of power, harmony is pre¬ 
served or re-established by the antagonism of two equal forces. 
This is what the author of the book of Job intended to convey, 
and this is how the Talmudists surpassed his fiction. 

“ Elohim permitted the sea to produce a master for itself 
and the earth likewise a king. The sea brought forth Levia¬ 
than and the earth Behemoth from its lacerated womb. 
Leviathan was the great sea-serpent, and Behemoth the cherub 
with immense horns. But soon Leviathan so filled the sea 
that the waters cried out to Elohim, unable to find refuge. 
The earth lamented on her part, being ground under the feet 
of Behemoth and despoiled of all verdure. Elohim took pity 
on them, removing Leviathan from the sea and Behemoth from 
the earth. And He salted them to preserve them for the 
feast on the Last Day. Then shall the elect eat the flesh of 
Leviathan and of Behemoth, which will be found delicious 
because the Lord Himself hath preserved and prepared it.” 

Where is Voltaire to deride this monstrous salting, to laugh 
at this god-cook, and at this festal consumption of frightful 
mummies? We frankly grant him that rabbinical allegories 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 115 


often shock good taste and that fine flower of literary polish 
which their authors neither knew nor could divine. But what 
will scoffers say if by the fable of Leviathan and Behemoth they 
can be made to understand the solution of the enigma of evil ? 
What would they answer were it said to them—The devil of 
Christianity represents the blind excesses of vital force, but 
Nature preserves and maintains equilibrium ; monstrosities 
themselves have their cause and serve sooner or later for the 
nourishment of universal harmony. Fear not, therefore, 
phantoms; all that is above man must be more beautiful and 
better than man ; below him is the beast, and the beast, how¬ 
ever overgrown he may be, must be either the help or the 
pasturage of man ! Cowardly children, fear no more that the 
devil will eat you! Be men, and it is you who will eat the 
devil, for the devil, that is, the spirit of absurdity and unin¬ 
telligence, can never raise himself above the animal. This 
is what we are to understand by the final and Kabbalistic 
banquet of Behemoth and Leviathan ! 

Picture now, a Kohanimic or Massoretic commentator, 
taking the Talmudic allegory on facts literally, establishing, 
for example, that the moon is the saltery of the Eternal 
Father, that He transported Leviathan and Behemoth thither 
after He had opened and salted them, and then you will have 
some notion of the Talmud’s compilation, of its veiled lights 
and ingenuous errors. 

The first Talmud, the only truly Kabbalistic one, was 
collected during the second century of the Christian era by 
the last chief of the Tenaims, Rabbi Jehuda-Hakadosch- 
Hanassi, that is, Juda. the most holy and the prince. The 
names of Kadosch and prince were given to the great initiates 
of the Kabbalah, and are preserved among adepts of occult 
Masonry and the Rose-Cross. R. Jehuda composed his book 
according to all the rules of supreme initiation; he wrote it 
within and without, as Ezekiel and St John have it, and he 
indicated its transcendental sense by the sacred letters and 
numbers corresponding to the Bereschit of the first six 
Sephiroth. The Mischna consists of six books, named 
Sederim, and these in order and subject correspond to the 
absolute signs of Kabbalistic philosophy, as we are about to 
explain. 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


116 

We have already said that the Kabbalists do not define 
God but adore Him in His manifestations, which are idea 
and form, intelligence and love; they suppose a supreme 
power based on two laws, which are stable wisdom and active 
intelligence, in other terms, necessity and liberty. It is thus 
that they form a primal triangle conceived in the following 
manner :— 

Kether, the Crown. 

Binah, understanding. Chocmah, wisdom. 

Then, as a reflection of this supreme conception in our own 
ideality, they establish a second triangle in an inverted sense. 
Absolute justice, corresponding to supreme wisdom or neces¬ 
sity, absolute love, corresponding to active intelligence or 
liberty, and supreme beauty, which results from the harmonies 
of justice and love, corresponding to divine power. 

Gedulah, Love. Geburah, Justice. 

Tiphereth, 

Beauty. 

By joining and interlacing these two triangles there is 
formed the Burning Star or Solomon’s Seal, that is, the com¬ 
plete expression of the theological philosophy of Bereschit, 
or universal Genesis. 

On this basis R. Jehuda establishes the divisions of his 
work. The first book, or Sederim, corresponding to the 
notion of Kether, is entitled Zeraim, the seeds, because in 
the notion of the Supreme Crown is contained that of the 
fructifying principle and of universal production. The second 
book corresponds to the Sephira of Chocmah; it is entitled 
Moed, and treats of sacred things in which nothing must be 
changed because they represent eternal order. The third 
book, in correspondence with Binah, liberty or creative power, 
treats of women and the family, and bears the name of 
Naschim. The fourth book, inspired by the idea of Geburah 
or justice, treats of crimes and their punishment; its title is 
Nazchim. The fifth book, corresponding to Gedulah, that is, 
to mercy and love, is entitled Kadoschim, and treats of 
consoling beliefs and things holy. Finally, the sixth book, 



THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 117 


analogous to the Sephira of Tiphereth, contains the most 
hidden secrets of life and the morality which concerns it; it 
treats of purifications, that is, of spiritual medicine, and bears 
the mysterious name of Tharoth or Tarot, expressing in 
itself alone all the concealed sense of the symbolic wheels of 
Ezekiel, and the name of Thorah, still given by the rabbins 
to the whole of Scripture. At the head of the Mischna, 
Rabbi Jehudah-Hakadosch-Hanassi, places the tradition of the 
old Jewish sages—the proverbs and maxims of Solomon’s 
successors in the study of sovereign wisdom. 

“ By three things does the world subsist,” said Simon the 
Just, “by the teaching of the law, the obligations of the 
cultus, and works of mercy.” So we have once more the 
Kabbalistic triangle, the fixed law, progressive religion, and 
charity, which is the common life and reason both of law and 
cultus. 

Antigonus has said—“ Be not as the servant who obeys 
for recompense; let your reward be in your obedience itself, 
and be the respect of things above inherent in you.” There 
is nothing superstitious in this, and it should be pondered 
over by a number of Catholics. 

“The journey is short,” said R. Tarphon, “the need is 
great, and the workmen are idle, but they will not gain less 
abundantly the meed of their day’s labour; the Master 
answers for them, and his activity supplements their indol¬ 
ence.” Promise of salvation to all, bold denial of sin and 
misery, responsibility of Providence, which excludes the 
notion of chastisement in the temporal necessity of suffering, 
suffering being looked on only as a spur to human indifference. 

Akabiah said—“Know these three things well and thou 
wilt never sin—whence thou comest, whither thou goest, and 
unto whom thou art responsible.” Here are three things 
which must be known in order to be never more guilty of 
deliberate sin. He who knows them will sin no more; other¬ 
wise he would be insane. He who does not yet know them 
cannot sin—how, in fact, can we fail over duties of which we 
are ignorant? 

Such are the maxims collected by Judas the holy and 
princely at the head of the book of seeds or universal 
principles. He proceeds afterwards from the figurative to 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


118 

the positive, and treats of agriculture. Here Volney and 
Dupuis would discover the calendar in the highest mysteries 
of Judaistic religion, and why should not the calendar be 
found theie? Does not the Crown of Kether correspond 
to the crown of the year, and are not religious festivals the 
visible jewels of that diadem of supreme belief? But the 
transcendent philosophy of the Talmud leaves far behind all 
the superstitions of materialized faiths. He who says—“ I 
will sin and the day of pardon will absolve me, makes void 
the day of pardon, and will by no means be absolved from 
his wilful wickedness.” 

“Sins,” say the Talmudists once more, “when they are 
between man and God can be absolved by God on the day 
of pardon, but when they are between man and man, that is, 
when they concern justice between brothers, man only can 
remit them by declaring before the law that restitution has 
been made.” This is magnificent and needs no commentary. 

Such is the wisdom which presides over the festivals of 
Israel described in the second book of the Talmud of Jeru¬ 
salem, so closely connected with the first, since the one treats 
of the culture of fields and souls, the other of the cultus of 
God and of the symbolic calendar. The third book, or 
Sederim, is more particularly consecrated to women and the 
fundamental basis of the family. Talmudic jurisprudence 
does not divide man from woman, and does not seek, by 
irritating questions of respective equality or superiority, to 
establish antagonism in love ; for Kabbalists, woman is neither 
the equal, nor servant, nor mistress, nor companion of man; 
she is man himself, conceived from the maternal or affectionate 
standpoint; woman possesses all the rights of man in man, 
and man respects himself in woman. “ Never, therefore, let 
human folly divide those whom divine wisdom has pleased to 
unite, and woe to those who live single! ” The questions of 
female emancipation and social equality are, in fact, the 
dreams of celibate women, and from the standpoint of natural 
law the celibate is a monstrosity. “ O, soul of my soul, heart 
of my heart, and flesh of my flesh,” said an initiate in the 
mysteries of the Mischna, with characteristic oriental pom¬ 
posity, “you speak of becoming my equal! you would there¬ 
fore become other than myself; you would tear your heart 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 119 


from mine, you would make two of those who are one; and 
just as God formed thee from the very bone and flesh of my 
body, you would draw something monstrous out of you to 
complete yourself and replace me in your nature. But when 
you are my rival in love, will you ever be my equal in desola¬ 
tion and regret ? ” 

“The altar weeps,” said a Talmudic rabbin, “when the 
husband and wife separate.” 

The fourth book of the Mischna, on injustice and com¬ 
pensation, is a collection of civil laws far superior to any code 
of the Middle Ages, and it is to the source of this secret 
legislation that the preservation of Israel through so many 
persecutions must be referred, as also its emancipation by 
industry, which is the final material term of civilization, and 
the safeguard of all the political rights so painfully and com¬ 
pletely recovered in our own days by the reinstated children 
of the old Jewish pariahs. 

The books entitled Kadoschim and Tharoth complete by 
their details the body of the great Jewish traditions. Wide is 
the distance between this splendid work of initiation and the 
commentaries of the two Ghemara, or the Aristotelian legis¬ 
lation of Moses Maimonides, who was, nevertheless, an erudite 
doctor and great man, but he was prejudiced against the 
Kabbalistic keys of the Talmud by his horror of superstition 
and his reaction against mysticism. In his “Guide to the 
Lost,” and in his “Eight Chapters,” he directs Talmudic 
traditions to the common laws of nature and reason; then in 
the Jad Hacksaka or “Assistance,” he welds Jewish belief 
into a symbol of thirteen articles, which is a masterpiece of 
simplicity and reasonableness, but, unconsciously to Maimo¬ 
nides himself, it is so connected with pure Kabbalistic 
principles, that the first thirteen keys of the Tarot precisely 
correspond by their Kabbalistic signs to the thirteen funda¬ 
mental articles of the symbol of Maimonides. 

Masonic associations were formed in this writer’s time; 
they collected the traditions lost to the Jews and proscribed 
by the Christians, for the very name and attributes of masonry 
have reference to the reconstruction of the Temple, that 
universal dream of the Kabbalah. “The reign of Messiah 
will come,” said one of the fathers of the synagogue, “ when 


120 


TEE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


the people shall be for ever delivered from the oppression of 
the kings of the earth.” 

“ There is no true Israelite,” said another master, “ for 
whom the Temple is not an immediately realizable edifice, 
for he reconstructs it in his heart.” The Temple was, there¬ 
fore, a social Utopia, and a symbol of perfect government 
founded on the democratic hierarchy of merit and intelligence. 
The Templars, initiated in the East into this doctrine, were, 
therefore, real and dreadful conspirators, whom popes and 
kings were obliged to exterminate in order to secure their 
own existence. Then came the French Revolution, which 
confounded in a universal chaos the memories of the Amor- 
aimes, the hopes of the Joannites, and the initiations of Free¬ 
masonry. The spirit of the Ruins had breathed, and the 
rebuilders of the Temple left their plans, squares, and com¬ 
passes in the debris. 

The Temple, nevertheless, should and will be rebuilt, for 
human intelligence eventually attains its ends, and a perfect 
and rational Logos has never been articulated and repeated 
through the ages without creating, sooner or later, its realiza¬ 
tion in proportion to the largeness of its aspirations and the 
exactitude of its calculations. 1 

IV.— Kabbalistic Dogmas. 

(Extracted from the Collection of Pistorius, and interpreted by Eliphas 

Levi.) 


I. 

Novem sunt hierarchies. 

The hierarchic number is nine. 

For the explanation of. this dogma see p. 158, et seq. 


Schema misericordiam licit, sed et judicium. 

The divine name signifies mercy, but also judgment. 

The Infinite Being when exercising his power upon the 
finite must necessarily chastise to correct and not to avenge 

1 See Note 15. 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 


12 I 


himself. The strength of the sin does not exceed that of the 
sinner, and if the punishment be greater than the offence, he 
who inflicts it becomes executioner and is the real criminal, 
who is wholly inexcusable and himself alone deserving of 
eternal punishment. Any being who is tortured above measure, 
enlarged by the infinitude of his suffering, would become 
God, and this is what the ancients represented in the myth 
of Prometheus, immortalized by the devouring vulture, and 
destined to dethrone Jupiter. 


3 - 

Peccatum Ada fuit truncatio Malchuth ab cirbore sephirotica. 

The sin of Adam is the separation of Malchuth from the 
Sephirotic tree. 

To attain a personal and independent existence man was 
forced to detach himself from God. It is this which takes 
place at birth. The child who comes into the world is a spirit 
loosened from the bosom of God to go forth and partake of 
the fruit of the tree of Knowledge and to enjoy liberty. For 
this reason God gives him an apron of flesh. He is condemned 
to death by that very birth which constitutes his sin, but by 
the sin which emancipates him, he compels God to redeem 
him, and makes conquest of true life, which is impossible 
without liberty. 

4 - 

Cum arbore peccati Deus creavit seculum. 

The tree of the trespass was the instrument of the world’s 
creation. 

The passions of man impel him to the battle of life, but 
they would also hurry him to destruction had he not reason 
to overcome and restrain them. Thus he creates virtue within 
him, and this is moral force, for which temptations are neces¬ 
sary. It is for this reason, according to the Zohar, that God 
made a fissure in the absolute in order to create the relative. 
Time seems a lacuna in eternity, and it is said in the Bible 
that God repented the making of man. Now, one only re¬ 
pents of a fault, and the creation is, so to speak, the sin of 
God himself. 


122 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


5 - 

Magnus aquilo fons est animarum. 

The great North-wind is the font of souls. 

Heat is indispensable to life. Nations migrate from north 
to south, and inert souls thirst for activity, to find which 
they come into the world. They are cold in their primal 
inaction, because their creation is incomplete. Now, man 
must co-operate in his creation ; God begins, but he himself 
must finish it. If he passed not through birth to death, he 
would slumber absorbed in the eternity of God, and would 
never be the conqueror of his own immortality. 

6. 

Codum est Kether. 

The Heaven is Kether, or the Crown. 

There is no name among Kabbalists by which the Supreme 
King is designated; they speak of the Crown only, which 
proves the existence of the King, and they say that this Crown 
is Heaven. 

7 - 

Animce a tertio lumine ad quartam descendant, inde ad quintain 

ascendunt. Dies unus. Post mortem noctem sub-intrant. 

Souls, the daughters of the third light, descend to the 
fourth; thence they go upward to the fifth ; and this 
is one day. After death they pass into night. 

In God, as in humanity, the number three signifies 
generation and love ; this is the third person, or divine 
conception, and it is described by the Kabbalist as the third 
light, whence souls descend to enter into the fourth, namely, 
natural and elementary life. Hence they must raise them¬ 
selves to the fifth, which is the pentagrammatic star, symbol 
of the quintessence and of the will which rules the elements. 
Afterwards, the Kabbalist compares an existence to a day 
followed by a night, and thus foreshadows an awakening, 
upon which a new existence supervenes. 


the written tradition of magic 


123 


8 . 

Sex dies Geneseos sunt sex literce Bereschith. 

The six days, of Genesis are the six letters of the word 
Bereschith. 


9 - 

Paradisus est arbor Sephiricus. In medio magnus 
Adam est Tiphereth. 

Paradise is the Sephirotic tree; the great Adam who is 
in the centre is Tiphereth. 


10. 

Quautor flumina ex uno fonte. In medio unius sunt 
sex et dat decern. 

The four rivers of Eden issue from a single source, in 
the middle of which there are six, and the whole 
equals ten. 

These three dogmas exhibit the allegorical nature of the 
history of the Terrestrial Paradise, which signifies truth on 
earth. The description given in the Bible of this garden 
contains the sacred numbers of the Kabbalah. The history 
of the world’s creation, which precedes the account of Eden, 
is less a history than a symbol expressing the eternal laws of 
creation, the synthesis of which is contained in the six 
hieroglyphical letters of the word Bereschith. 


11. 

Factum fatum quia fatum verbum est. 

A fact is a fatality because a fatality is a reason. 

A supreme reason governs all, and hence there is no 
fatality; all which is must be; all which happens ought to 
take place. An accomplished fact is irrevocable as destiny, 
but destiny is the reason of the Supreme Intelligence. 


124 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


I 2. 

Portce jubilceum sunt. 

The gates are a jubilee. 

There are fifty gates of knowledge, according to the 
Kabbalists, that is to say, a classification in general according 
to five series of ten particular sciences, which together con¬ 
stitute general and universal science. Having passed through 
each of these five series the sage enters into the joy of true 
knowledge, represented by the great jubilee, which takes 
place once in fifty years. 


r 3- 

Abraham semper vertitur ad austrum. 

Abraham always turns towards the south wind. 

In other words, towards the wind which brings the rain. 
The doctrines of Abraham, those, namely, of the Kabbalah, 
are invariably fruitful doctrines. Israel is the race of real 
ideas and of productive labour. Preserving with admirable 
patience the instruction of suffering truth, toiling with rare 
sagacity and untiring industry, the people of God must 
accomplish the conquest of the world. 

14. 

Per additionem He Abraham genuit. 

It was by the addition of the He that Abraham became 
a father. 

Abraham was originally Abram. God, says the Bible, 
added a He to his name when promising that he should 
become the father of many nations. He is the feminine 
letter of the divine Tetragram. It represents the Word and 
the fecundity thereof; it is the hieroglyphic sign of 
realization. The doctrine of Abraham is absolute, and its 
principle is essentially realistic. The Jews are no dreamers 
in religion ; they think, and their activity tends always to 
multiplication, not only as regards the family, but the wealth 
which nourishes the family, and permits the increase thereof. 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 


2 5 


15 - 

Omnes ante Mosem per unicornem prophetaverant. 

All the prophets who preceded Moses prophesied by the 
unicorn. 

That is to say, they beheld only one side of truth. The 
horn in Hebrew symbolism signifies power, especially the 
power of thought. The fabulous unicorn represents the 
ideal; on the contrary, the bull, or cherub, is the emblem 
of the force which exists in reality. For this reason Jupiter 
Ammon, Osiris, and Isis are represented with two horns 
upon their brows; Moses also appears with two horns, 
one of which is the trumpet of the Word, and the other 
the cornucopiae. 

16. 

Mas et foemina sunt Tiphereth et Malchuth. 

Man and woman are the beauty of God and his 
kingdom. 

Beauty reveals God. By her beauty Nature proves herself 
the daughter of God. The beautiful has been defined to 
be the splendour of the true ; this splendour enlightens the 
world and constitutes its raison d’etre. This beauty is the 
ideal, but the ideal is true only in proportion as it is realized. 
The divine ideal is like the spouse of nature, who impassions 
her and makes her a mother. 


i7- 

Copula cum Tiphereth et generatio tua benedicetur. 

Espouse supreme beauty, and thy generation shall be 
blessed. 

When marriage is holy the posterity will be also holy. 
Children are born vicious when they are conceived in sin. 
Love must be raised and ennobled in order to sanctify 
marriage. If human beings in their union give way to an 
instinct which is theirs in common with the animals, they 
bring forth animals in human shape. True marriage equally 
unites souls, spirits, and bodies, and then blessed are the 
children born of it. 


126 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


18. 

Dcemon est Deus inversus. 

The devil is God upside down. 

The devil is the antithesis of God, and had he a real 
existence there could certainly be no God. Jesus said: 
The devil is a liar like his father. Now, who is the father 
of the devil ? The father of the devil is falsehood. The 
devil denies what God affirms, the consequence of which is 
that God denies what the devil has the audacity to affirm. 
The devil affirms his own existence, and by making good 
triumph invariably, God gives Satan an eternal denial. 


19. 

Duo erunt unum. Quod i?itra est fiat extra et nox sicut dies 
illuminabitur. 

Two shall be one. That which is within shall produce 
itself without, and the night shall be enlightened like 
the day. 

God and nature, authority and liberty, faith and reason, 
religion and science, are eternal principles which no one has 
yet been able to conciliate. They exist notwithstanding, and 
as they cannot destroy one another it is above all necessary 
that they should enter into harmony. The method of their 
reconciliation consists in their clear distinction and the 
equilibration of one by the other. Shadow is indispensable 
to light; the nights mark and measure the days. Let the 
woman beware of seeking to change herself into man ; let the 
man beware of usurping the empire of woman; may both 
unite to complete each other! The more woman remains 
woman, the more she deserves the love of man; the more 
that man is manlike, the more does he inspire confidence in 
the woman. Reason is man, faith is woman. Man must 
leave woman her mysteries; woman must leave man the 
independence which he loves to sacrifice to her. Never let 
the father dispute the mother’s rights in her maternal domain, 
nor ever let the mother invade the paternal sovereignty of the 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 127 


man. The more they respect one another, the more closely 
will they be united. Herein is the solution of the problem. 


20. 

P'xnitentia non est verburn . 

To repent is not to act. 

True penitence does not consist in either regrets or tears. 
Discovering that we have done wrong, we must go back at 
once and do rightly. If I have taken a false road, to what 
purpose shall I strike my breast and fall weeping like a child 
or a coward ? I must return upon the path and run to make 
up for lost time. 

21. 

Excelsi sunt aqua australis et ignis septemtrionalis et prcefecti 
eorum. Site. 

The queen in the South is water, and in the North fire 
(sic). Be silent about this arcanum. 

Be silent because the masters ordain it. Let us add merely 
to their formula what may serve to explain it. Harmony 
results from the analogy of contraries. Contraries by means 
of harmony are governed by contraries. The king of har¬ 
monies is the master of nature. 


22. 

In principio, id est in Chocmah. 

In the beginning, that is to say, in wisdom. 

Wisdom is the principle of all which exists eternally ; by her 
all begins and ends, so that when sacred Scripture speaks of a 
beginning it signifies the eternal wisdom. In the beginning 
was the Word, that is, the Word was in the eternal wisdom. 
To suppose that God decided to create after an eternity of 
inaction, is to suppose two monstrous absurdities — 1, an 
eternity which ends; 2, a God who changes. The word 
Bereschith , which begins Genesis, literally signifies in the head, 
or by the head, otherwise, in or by thought, and this in God 
is eternal wisdom. 


128 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


23 - 

Vice ceternitatis sunt triginta duo. 

There are thirty-two ways which lead to the Eternal. 

These are the ten numerals and the twenty-two letters. 
Absolute conceptions are attached to the ten numerals, as 
being to unity, equilibrium to the duad, generation to the 
triad, &c. In Hebrew, letters represent numbers; combina¬ 
tions of letters give combinations of numbers and also of ideas, 
which follow closely the evolutions of numbers. For this 
reason occult philosophy is an exact science which may be 
called the arithmetic of thought. The secret book which is 
used in these combinations is the Tarot, composed of twenty- 
two allegorical figures of letters and numbers and of four 
series of ten, each having symbols analogous to the four letters 
of the Divine name, or tetragrammatic Schema. These series 
can each be reduced to nine, for, as a fact, there are only nine 
characters, the tenth being the repetition of unity. Four 
times nine will produce thirty-six, the number of Solomon’s 
talismans; on each talisman were two mysterious names, 
making up the seventy-two names of the Schemah ham- 
phorasch. 


24. 

Justi aquce , Dens mare. 

The just are the waters; God is the sea. 

All waters pass into the sea, and thence all derive, but all 
waters are not the sea. Thus, also, spirits come from God and 
return to God, but they are not God. The universal spirit, 
the living universe, the idol of the pantheist, is not God. The 
infinite being, quickened by an infinite life, reveals but is not 
God. As the principle of being and of all beings, God cannot 
be identified with being nor with any beings. What then is 
God? He is the incomprehensible without which nothing 
can be comprehended; he whom faith affirms without behold¬ 
ing to provide science with a foundation; the light invisible 
of which all visible light is the shadow; he of whom man’s 
genius dreams eternally while conscious of being the dream of 


The written tradition or magic 129 

his dream. Man makes God in his image and likeness and 
then exclaims: “It is thus that God has created me.” So 
also does God become man; so man becomes God. Seek 
God in humanity, and we shall find humanity in God. 


2 5 * 

Angeli apparentiarum sunt volatiles cceli et animantia. 

The birds of heaven and the beasts of earth are the 
angels of the outer form. 

Animals are innocent and their quality of life is fatal; they 
are the slaves of the outer and lower nature, as the angels are 
servants of the divine and superior nature; they bear analytical 
figures of the thought which synthetizes in man; they represent 
the specialized forces of nature; they came into the world 
before man that they might announce his coming to the world, 
and they are the ministers of his body as the angels of 
heaven of his soul. That which is above is as that which is 
below, and that which is below is as that which is above. The 
series diffuses harmony, and harmony results from the analogy 
of contraries. 


26. 

Literce nominis sunt Danielis regna. 

The letters of the Tetragram are the Kingdoms of Daniel. 

The animals of Ezekiel represent celestial forces; those 
of Daniel typify the powers of the earth. They are four 
in number, corresponding to the elements and the cardinal 
points. The Eden of Moses, a circular garden divided into 
four parts by four rivers flowing from a central source; the 
circular plain of Ezekiel ( circumduxit me in gyro ) quickened 
by the four winds; and the sea of Daniel with its circular 
horizon possessed by four animals; are symbols that are 
analogous to one another, and are contained in the four hiero¬ 
glyphic letters which compose the name of Jehovah. 


130 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


27. 

Angelus sex alas habens non transformatur. 

The angel with six wings is never transformed. 

There is no change for the mind which is equilibrated per¬ 
fectly. The symbolic heavens are three in number—the 
divine heaven, the philosophical heaven, and the natural 
heaven. The wings of true contemplation, those of en¬ 
lightened thought, and those of science in conformity with 
actuality, such are the six wings which give stability to the 
mind, and prevent them from mutation. 

28. 

Literce sunt hieroglyphicce in omnibus. 

The sacred letters are perfect hieroglyphs which express 
all ideas. 

Hence, by the combination of these letters, which are also 
numbers, are obtained combinations of ideas which are always 
new and always rigorously exact, like the operations of arith¬ 
metic. This is the signal wonder and the supreme power of 
Kabbalistic science. 

29. 

Absconde faciem tuam et ora. 

Hide thy face in praying. 

This is the habit of the Jews, who, for greater recollection 
in their devotions, cover their head with a veil which they call 
thalith. This veil is of Egyptian origin and resembles that 
of Isis. It signifies that holy things must be concealed from 
the profane, and that our account for the secret thoughts of 
our heart is to be rendered to God alone. 


3 °- 

, Nulla res spiritualis descendit sine indumento. 

No spirit ever descends without a garment. 

The garments of the spirit have reference to the media 
through which it passes. As it is the lightness or heaviness 
of bodies which causes them to rise or to fall down, so the 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 131 


spirit clothes itself to descend and unclothes itself to go up¬ 
ward. We cannot live in water, and spirits disencumbered 
of their terrestrial bodies could not live in our atmosphere. 

3i- 

Extrinsecus timor est inferior amove , sed intrinsecus superior. 

Fear is outwardly inferior to love, but love inwardly is 
inferior to fear. 

There are two kinds of fear, that which is interested and that 
which is disinterested, the fear of punishment and that of evil. 
Now, the fear of evil being the love of justice, quite pure and 
disinterested, is more noble than selfish love in those who do 
good only from the desire of reward. 

32. 

Nasus discernit proprieiates. 

Properties are discerned by the nose. 

In the symbolism of the Zohar, the divine longanimity is 
represented by the length of the nose given to the allegorical 
image of God. Humanity, on the contrary, is depicted with 
a short nose, because it understands little and is irritated 
easily. To have a nose, in common parlance, signifies to 
possess skill in judgment and tact in the conduct of life. The 
scent of a dog is a kind of divination. Presentience is in a 
way scenting out. 

33 - 

Anima bona , anima nova filia Orientis. 

The good soul is a soul coming newly out of the East. 

There are two kinds of goodness—the original goodness 
which is innocence, and that which is acquired by virtue. 
The new soul, daughter of the East, is pure like the day 
in its dawning, but it must pass through trial wherein its 
splendour will tarnish, and afterwards it must purify itself 
by sacrifice. Will all this be accomplished in one or in 
many incarnations? It is difficult for us to know this. We 
■shall elsewhere indicate our reasons for regarding a number of 


3 2 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


incarnations as impossible, and we may add that they have 
never been recognised by Kabbalists of the first order. 
Instead of reincarnation they admit the embryonic state, 
that is, the intimate union of two souls, one already passed 
away and the other still living on earth, that which has died 
having still duties to accomplish in this world and thus 
performing them by the intermediation of the person who 
is alive. In this manner personalities remain intact, and 
Elias, without ceasing to be Elias, may live again in John 
the Baptist. So Moses and Elias appeared upon Tabor as 
colleagues of Jesus Christ, but to say that Jesus was an 
incarnation of Moses would be to efface either the person 
of Moses or that of Jesus. 


34 

Anima plena superiori conjungitur. 

When a soul is complete, it unites with a superior soul. 

Souls unite by means of thought and love without any 
regard to space. From sun to sun, from universe to universe, 
they can not merely correspond but be present one to 
another. According to the rabbins, the phenomena of the 
embryonic and guardian states are accomplished after this 
manner. We have explained what they understand by the 
first; the second is the assistance extended by a liberated 
soul to a soul in punishment, the assumption of a struggling 
spirit by a glorious and triumphant spirit—in other words, 
that of a saint who constitutes himself the guardian angel 
of a just man. These are beautiful and consoling hypotheses, 
deduced from the doctrine of the solidarity of souls which 
is a consequence of their collective creation and existence. 

35 

Post deos rex verus regnabit super terrain. 

When there are no longer false gods a true king shall 
reign upon the earth. 

Idolatry is the cultus of arbitrary despotism, and the 
kings of this world are made in the likeness of the gods 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 133 


which the earth adores. A god who infinitely chastises 
finite beings after having created them fragile and having 
imposed on them a law which contradicts all the tendencies 
of their nature, without having clearly announced the law 
itself to all, such a god gives authority to all the barbarities 
of autocrats. Men will have equitable monarchs when they 
shall conceive a just god. Beliefs form opinion, and it is 
opinion which consecrates powers. The divine right of 
Louis XI. was in true correspondence with the God of 
Dominic and Pius V. It is to the God of Fenelon and 
Saint Vincent of Paul that we owe modern philanthropy 
and civilization. God advances when man makes progress; 
when he rises, God increases; then the ideal which the 
world has made unto itself reacts in turn upon the world. 
The radiation of human thought arrested upon the divine 
objective reflects back on humanity, for the objective is 
simply a mirror. This reflection of the ideal becomes the 
light of the actual world. Manners take their shape from 
faith, and politics are the result of manners. 

36 

Linea viridis gyrat universa. 

The green line circles about everything. 

In their pantacles the Kabbalists represent the divine crown 
by a green line which encompasses all the other figures. 
Green is the alliance of the two chief colours of the prism, 
yellow and blue—symbols of the Elohim, or great powers 
which are recapitulated and united in God. 

37 

Amen est influxus numerationum. 

Amen is the influence of numbers. 

This word, which terminates prayers, is, in fact, an affirma¬ 
tion of the mind and an adhesion of the heart. To save such 
an expression from blasphemy, it is indispensable that the 
prayer should have been reasonable. It is like a mental 
signature; by it the believer affirms himself and makes him¬ 
self in the likeness of his prayer. Amen is the acceptance of 


134 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


an account opened between God and man. Woe to him who 
calculates amiss, for he shall be treated as a thief. To utter 
Amen after having formulated error is to dedicate one’s soul 
to the falsehood personified by Satan; to utter it after the 
formulation of truth is to make an alliance with God. 


V.—On Numbers and their Virtues. 

There is one principle, one truth, one reason, one absolute 
and universal philosophy. Whatsoever is has its being in 
unity regarded as the beginning, and it returns into unity 
regarded as the end. Unity is the principle of numbers, of 
movement, and hence also of life. It is, in like manner, the 
synthesis of numbers, the idea of God and of man, the alliance 
of reason and faith. Unity may be conceived after four 
manners:—As universal, producing and embracing all num¬ 
bers, having therefore no duality, a unity without number, 
absolutely necessary and incomprehensible ; secondly, as 
relative, manifested, possessing duality ; the beginning of 
numerical sequence; thirdly, as living and fructifying motion 
and life in itself; lastly, as visible and revealed in universal 
form. The universal unity is inconceivable; it is God. The 
revealed unity which in turn reveals numbers is the Word of 
God. The living unity is the Holy Spirit; the unity made 
known by universal harmony is Providence. These four 
unities, which are one in essence, are expressed by the letters 
of the Divine Tetragram. The great and indivisible unity 
presents itself to the mind as spiritual and material, hidden 
and manifested. The name of God expresses these two intel¬ 
lectual forms of the invisible unity by n 1 *, and the two forms 
of the visible unity by HI, which reflect the first two, each 
letter in the second pair, as in the first, being the reflection 
of the other. At the bottom of the sacred Tetragram there is 
therefore the one letter Jod. Numbers exist only through 
unity, and are modes thereof. Above all conceptions of 
unity, a necessary hypothesis forces us to admit the absolute 
and inconceivable unity, beginning without beginning, cause 
uncaused, self-existent, one without equal, and thus without a 
second. It is manifested through changeless wisdom and 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 135 


ever-active intelligence. The harmony of this wisdom and 
intelligence constitutes the supreme power—the Divinity. 

The duad is the number of the Elohim, or forces which 
constitute the equilibrium of universal balance. It is also in 
a special manner the number of woman, wife of man and 
mother of society. The idea of the supreme unity reflects 
itself in the duad. The figures of the duad are the Son, who 
is the splendour of the Father, and the Word, which is the form 
of thought; it is speech fecundated by Spirit, woman reflecting 
man, water mirroring the sky. It is also the manifested light. 
By mistaking this light for the unity itself, we come to the 
black duad—shadow, matter, unintelligence, hell itself. The 
good duad is harmonious and equilibrated ; its highest ex¬ 
pression is the incarnation, the unconfused combination of 
divinity and humanity, God revealed in man that man may 
rise to the divine life. The physical expression of the duad 
is the firmament which separates the waters from the waters; 
it is the point of fixation which rules the movements of matter. 
It was represented at the gate of Solomon’s temple by the 
pillars Jakin and Bohas. 

The duad is unity reproducing itself to create, and this is 
why the sacred allegories picture Eve issuing from the very 
breast of Adam. It is also the number of the Gnosis and 
the generative number of society and law. One is the cause, 
two the logos. Unity can only be manifested by means of 
the duad, for unity itself and the idea of unity already make 
two. Divinity, which is one in its essence, has two essential 
conditions as the fundamental basis of its being; these are 
necessity and liberty. Revelation is the duad—every logos is 
two-fold and supposes two. The ancients, in their symbols 
and magical operations, multiplied the signs of the duad, that 
its law, ‘which is that of equilibrium, might not be forgotten. 
In their evocations they invariably constructed two altars and 
immolated two victims, a white and a black one; the operator, 
holding the sword in one hand and the rod in the other, 
should have one foot shod and the other bare. But the 
final hieratic secret of the duad cannot be made known; 
the reason, according to Hermes Trismegistus, being the 
stupidity of the vulgar, who would give all the immoral 
attributes of blind fatality to the sacred necessities of science. 


13 6 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


We must restrain the multitude, he tells us, by the fear of the 
unknown, and Christ also has said, “Cast not your pearls 
before swine, lest trampling them under foot they turn and 
rend you.” The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of 
which the fruits are fatal, is the image of this hieratic secret 
of the duad, which, as a fact, if divulged, would not fail to be 
misconstrued, and the impious negation of that Supreme 
Arbiter who is the ethical cause of being would be commonly 
deduced therefrom. It is, therefore, in the essence of things 
that the revelation of this secret inflicts the penalty of death, 
while it is not for all this the Great Arcanum of Magic; but 
the secret of the duad leads to that of the tetrad, or, more 
properly, precedes it and is resolved by the triad, which 
contains the word of the sphinxitic enigma as it should have 
been discovered in order to save the life, expiate the involun¬ 
tary crime, and establish the kingdom of CEdipus. The 
reproduction of unity by the duad necessarily brings us to the 
conception and dogma of the triad, as we have said, and we 
pass on to this great number, which is the plenitude and 
perfect logos of unity. 

The triad is the number of creation; it is the light mani¬ 
fested in its fulness; it is the radiating Shekinah of the 
Kabbalists. The Divine Triad expressed by the first three 
letters of the Tetragram signifies Father, Mother, Love. In 
the primitive Christian Kabbalah, the Son has been substituted 
for the Mother, to remove from the Divine Idea all that 
suggests the subjective and passive. The human soul has its 
triad also, thrice repeated; it is all in intelligence, all in will, 
all in action, which is its word and its love. We again find 
the triad in the intellectual worlds of the Kabbalah—Assiah, 
the world of forms; Jetzirah, the world of thoughts or ideas; 
and Briah, the world of causes. Hierarchy is also regulated 
by the triad, that of celestial spirits having three orders and 
nine degrees. It is found further in the universal light, called 
Od, Ob, and Aour by the Kabbalists. 

The triad is the universal dogma, and the basis of magical 
doctrine. It supposes an intelligent cause, a cause which 
speaks, and an expressed principle. The Absolute, which is 
revealed in speech, endows the latter wtth a significance 
equivalent to itself, and itself creates a third in the compre- 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 


i37 


hension of this speech. Grammar invariably attributes three 
persons to the logos or verb. The first is that which speaks, 
the second that which is spoken to, and the third that which 
is spoken of. The Infinite Prince in creating speaks of 
Himself to Himself. Such is the explanation of the Triad 
and the origin of the dogma of the Trinity. The magical 
dogma is also triple. That which is above resembles or 
equals that which is below. Thus, two similar things, and 
the word which expresses their similitude, make three. In 
magic we have origin, realization, adaptation ; in alchemy, 
azoth, incorporation, transmutation; in theology, God, in¬ 
carnation, redemption ; in the human soul, thought, love, and 
action; in the family, father, mother, and child. The triad 
is the supreme end and expression of love; two seek each 
other only to become three. 1 

There are three intelligible worlds which correspond one 
to another by hierarchic analogy:—The natural or physical 
world, the spiritual or metaphysical world, and the divine 
or religious world. From these come the hierarchy of 
spirits, who are divided into three orders, and in these are 
always subdivided by the triad. All these revelations are 
logical deductions from the first mathematical notions of 
being and number. Unity to become active must reproduce 
itself. An indivisible, immovable, and unfruitful principle 
would be a dead and incomprehensible unity. Were God 
one only, He would be neither Father nor Creator; were 
He two, there would be antagonism and division in the 
Infinite; He is triple, therefore, for the creation of the 
infinite multitude of existences and numbers from Himself 
and in His image. Thus, He is really one in His essence 
and triple in our conception, by which we also behold Him 
triple in Himself, and one in our understanding and our 
love. This is a mystery for the believer, and a logical 
necessity for the initiate of the absolute and true sciences. 
The triad issues of itself from the duad ; the movement 
which produces two begets also three. Three is the key 
of numbers, for it is the first numeral synthesis; it is the 
triangle of geometry, the first complete and enclosed figure, 


1 See Note 16. 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


138 

the generator of an indefinite number of similar or dissimilar 
triangles. 

In the Tetragram, the triad, or He, taken at the beginning 
of the word, signifies divine copulation ; taken at the end, 
it signifies womanhood and maternity. Eve bears a name 
of three letters, but the primitive Adam is expressed by the 
single letter Jod, so that the Tetragram Jehovah nin**, should 
be pronounced Java. This leads us to the great and supreme 
mystery of magic, represented by the tetrad. 

The triad resumed by unity, and with the conception of 
unity added to that of the triad, produces the first square 
and perfect number, source of all numerical combinations, 
and origin of all forms—the quaternary or tetrad, the 
tetractys of Pythagoras, whence all is derived. This 
number produces the cross and square in geometry. All 
that exists, whether of good or evil, light or darkness, exists 
and is revealed by the tetrad. The affirmation of unity 
supposes the number four, unless this affirmation revolves 
in unity itself, as in a vicious circle. So the triad, as we 
have already observed, is explained by the duad and re¬ 
solved by the tetrad, which is the squared unity of even 
numbers, and the quadrangular basis of the cube, the unity 
of construction, solidity, and measure. 

The perfect word, that which is adequate to the thought 
which it expresses, always virtually contains or supposes a 
tetrad—the idea, with its three necessary and correlative 
forms, then the image of the thing signified or expressed, 
with the three terms of the judgment which qualifies it. 

A height, a breadth, which the height geometrically 
divides into two, and a depth separated from the height by 
the intersection of the breadth, such is the natural tetrad 
composed of two lines which are crossed. There are also 
four movements in Nature produced by two forces which 
sustain each other by their tendency in a contrary direction. 
Now the law which rules bodies is analogous and pro¬ 
portional to that which governs minds, and that which 
governs minds is the manifestation even of God’s secret, 
the mystery of creation. Visible nature reveals the unseen, 
and secondary causes are proportional and analogous to 
the manifestations of the First Cause, which is thus always 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 139 


revealed by the cross, that key of the mysteries of Egypt 
and India, the Tau of the patriarchs, the divine sign of 
Osiris, the Stauros of the Gnostics, the keystone of the 
Temple, the symbol of occult masonry, the central point 
or junction of the right angles of two infinite triangles. 

The Great Magic Agent is revealed by four phenomena, 
and the secret of its direction is the supreme arcanum of 
the sublime and ineffable tetrad of which we have treated 
under the title of the Great Magic Arcanum. 

The number four represents perfect equilibrium, the double 
duad, the cubic stone, the four elementary forms of universal 
matter. Revelation manifests itself by four laws—the law of 
nature, the law of fear, the law of grace, and the law of in¬ 
telligence. Spiritual progress is accomplished through four 
stages—penitence, faith, hope, charity. There are also four 
moral virtues—justice, strength, temperance, and prudence. 
The tetrad is symbolized by the four rivers of Eden, which 
issue from one source to water the whole paradise, forming the 
sign of the cross. It is also the number of power, and in 
its correspondences with humanity, it is the rebellious unity 
reconciled to the sovereign trinity. 

By the addition of unity to the quaternary, we obtain, 
together and separately, the ideas of divine synthesis and 
analysis, and attain the number five, which is that of the soul 
represented by the quintessence resulting from the equilibrium 
of the four magical elements, and by the sublime and myster¬ 
ious Pentagram. The quinary is the religious number, for it is 
that of Deity joined to that of the woman. In the Tarot this 
number is represented by the high priest or spiritual autocrat, 
symbol of human will, that supreme power the direction of 
which decides our eternal destinies. 

God, man, the three worlds—natural, spiritual, and divine 
—again form a magnificent quinary. 

The number six, or the senary, is that of initiation by 
ordeal; it is the number of equilibrium, and the hieroglyph 
of the knowledge of good and evil. It is also the number of 
man, for it is that of generation. As the triad expresses an 
absolute and complete concept, so the double ternary gives 
the notion of two absolutes. Under this aspect the senary is 
only the duad exalted and carried to its supreme power. 


140 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Thus it can represent the revolt of Satan, or the spontaneous 
deification of the created spirit The number six is contained 
wholly, and with all its mysteries, in the first word of Genesis 
— Bereschit, and the six days of creation explain this word 
letter by letter. The six days of Moses are not only the 
genesis of nature but of mind, which is differentiated from 
chaos according to the progression of numbers. This number 
also corresponds to Tiphereth, Beauty, or the Absolute 
Ideal. It is the woman clothed with the sun and having the 
moon beneath her feet, while she strives in the pangs of 
childbirth. It is the reflection of God in man, and of man 
in God, the mutual attraction of heaven and earth. Under 
the empire of the septenary, it is grace and love, but without 
it rebellion and the Antichrist. 

The number seven, or the septenary, is the sacred number 
of all theogonies and all symbols, because it is composed of 
the triad and tetrad. It represents magic power in its whole 
scope; it is the mind assisted by all elementary forces, it is 
the soul served by nature, it is the sanctum regnutn of the 
Claviculce, Satomonis, the great biblical number, the key of 
the creation of Moses, and the symbol of all religion. It is 
also the number of Charity, which is the crown of the spiritual 
edifice. It is the number of rest and stability. All things 
proceed from seven, return into seven, and explain them¬ 
selves by seven. This number was represented in the 
Temple of Jerusalem by the golden candlestick, which was 
in itself a complete and magnificent pantacle. The septenary 
is the entire Kabbalah. 

The number eight is that of reaction and equilibrating 
justice. The tetrad joined to the tetrad represents form 
balancing form, creation issuing from creation, the eternal 
balance of existence. Seven being the number of the repose 
of God, the unity which succeeds represents man, who toils 
and co-operates with nature in the work of creation. It also 
represents the eternal, because it is eternally adding one to 
seven, a beginning to every end, a re-birth after every death, 
a dawn after every night. It represents motion, yet also, and 
more than all, stability; it reconciles the opposed laws of 
nature, explains eternity by time, faith by knowledge, God by 
man. For this reason it is the number of Jesus Christ, and, 


THE WRITTEN TRADITION OF MAGIC 141 


in like manner, it is that of justice. It is the number of 
eternal life, which is maintained by the equilibrium of motion. 
It has been in all ages the sign of great hierophants and 
sovereign pontiffs. 

The number nine is that of initiation and prophecy, 
because, being composed of three times three, it represents 
the divine idea and the absolute philosophy of numbers, for 
which reason Apollonius says, that its mysteries must never 
be revealed. Hence, also, it is called the absolute number. 
It signifies complete truth, perfect initiation, the circumin- 
cession of the divine persons in Catholic theology. 

The number ten is the number of matter, of which the 
special sign is zero; in the Kabbalistic tree of the Sephiroth, 
ten represents Malchut, or exterior and material substance. 
The sin of Adam was materialism, and the fruit which he 
plucked from the tree represents the flesh isolated from the 
spirit, zero divided from unity. But ten is also the absolute 
number of the Kabbalah and the key of the Sephiroth. 


PART IV 


THE DOCTRINE OF SPIRITUAL ESSENCES ; 
OR, KABBALISTIC PNEUMATICS 1 


Introduction. 

The great and indispensable hypothesis of the destinies of 
futurity has been elaborated and directed from deduction 
to deduction by the seers of the ancient world. Kabbalistic 
pneumatics are a veritable science, which proceeds methodi¬ 
cally and exactly, ascending from the known to the unknown 
by the way of the least questionable analogies, because facts 
make known laws to it, and on these laws it substantially 
lays the foundation of its ever-prudent hypothesis. It is, 
therefore, Kabbalistic Pneumatics which we are about to 
unveil to our readers; we shall add an analysis of Isaac de 
Loria’s profound treatise on the circular progression of the 
soul —De Revolutionibus Animarum —and that of the Sepher 
Druschim by the same doctor. We shall bring forth from 
the shadows of occultism these amazing books, the key of 
which the modern world no longer possesses, and by so 
doing we believe ourselves to deserve well at the hands of 
science and reason. 

By the help of these powerful lights we shall explain the 
strange phenomena which scientific smatterers find it so 
convenient to deny, while they are overwhelmed, neverthe¬ 
less, by their evidence. Yes, images tremble, statues weep, 
the consecrated bread is imprinted with blood, hands issue 
from the wall to alarm the impious festivities of Balthazar by 
a menacing inscription. The author of this book does not 

1 See Note 17. 


142 



THE DOCTRINE OF SPIRITUAL ESSENCES 


H3 


fear to acknowledge that he has himself had the most 
astounding and formidable visions ; he has seen and touched 
angels and demons, as Maximus of Ephesus, and Schroepfer 
of Leipsic, caused them to be seen and touched by their 
adepts. He has been enabled to compare the hallucinations 
of the waking state with the illusions of dreams, and from all 
this he has concluded that reason directing faith and faith 
supporting reason are the only true lights of our souls, and 
that all else is but a vain exertion of the mind, aberration 
of the senses, and delirium of thought. He is not, therefore, 
writing what is of mere conjecture ; he boldly affirms what he 
knows. 

It was after he had descended from gulf to gulf and from 
horror to horror to the bottom of the seventh circle of the 
abyss, it was after he had traversed in all its length the dark¬ 
ness of the dolorous city, that Dante returning, and placing 
the devil, so to speak, upside down, rose consoled and 
victorious towards the light. We have performed the same 
voyage, and we present ourselves before the world with 
tranquillity on our countenance and peace in our heart. We 
come calmly to assure mankind that hell and the devil, the 
hopeless gulf, the chimseras, satyrs, ghouls, personified vices, 
three-headed dragons, and all the rest of the dismal phantas¬ 
magoria are a nightmare of madness, but that God only 
living, alone real, alone everywhere present, fills and leaves 
no void, fills, I repeat, the unlimited immensity with the 
splendours and eternal consolations of the sovereign reason. 

The things which are above this life can be conjectured in 
two ways, either by the calculations of analogy, or by the 
intuitions of extasis, in other words, by reason or by folly. 
The sages of Judea chose reason, and have left us, in books 
which are generally ignored, their magnificent hypotheses. 
On reading them, it becomes evident at once that our creeds 
have come out of them like inexplicable fragments, and that 
the apparent absurdity of our dogmas disappears when they 
are completed by the splendid reasoning of these masters. 
One is astonished, moreover, to find all the most beautiful 
and grandiose aspirations of our modern poetry philosophi¬ 
cally realized and completed therein. Goethe studied the 
Kabbalah, and the epic of “Faust” has issued from the 


»44 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


doctrines of the Zohar. Swedenborg, Saint Simon, and 
Fourier seem to have glimpsed the divine Kabbalistic 
synthesis through, the darkness and hallucinations of a more 
or less extraordinary nightmare, according to the different 
characters of these dreamers. In reality, this synthesis is the 
most perfect and beautiful thing which can be attained by 
human understanding. 

The books which treat of spirits according to the Kabba- 
lists are the Pneumatic Kabbalistica , found in the Kabbala 
Denudata of Baron de Rosenroth ; the Liber de Revolutioni- 
bus Animarum, by Isaac de Loria; 1 the Sepher Druschim, 
the book of Moses of Cordova, and some others less cele¬ 
brated. We shall give here not merely their abridgement, but, 
in a certain way, their quintessence. 


I.—Immortality. 

On matters which our science cannot in this life ascertain we 
can only reason by hypotheses. Humanity can know nothing 
of the superhuman, since the superhuman is that which 
exceeds the scope of humanity; the phenomena of decom¬ 
position which accompany death seem to protest in the name 
of science against this innate necessity of faith in another 
life which has brought forth so many dreams. Science, 
nevertheless, must take account of the want, for Nature, 
which does nothing without object, does not endow beings 
with desires that are not to be satisfied. Science, therefore, 
though necessarily ignorant, must, at least, suppose the 
existence, of things that are beyond her, and cannot put in 
question the continuity of life after the phenomenon called 
death, since no abrupt interruption is found in the magnum 
opus of Nature, which, according to the philosophy of Hermes, 
never proceeds by jumps. 

The immortality of the soul is kabbalistically proved by 
analogy, which is the one doctrine of the universal religion, 
as it is the key of science and the inviolable law of Nature. 
Death, in fact, can no more be an absolute end than birth 


1 See Note 18. 


THE DOCTRINE OE SPIRITUAL ESSENCES 145 


is a real beginning. What we call death is birth into a 
new life. Nature does not unmake what she has made in 
the order of the necessary progressions of existence, and she 
cannot belie her own fundamental laws. Birth proves the 
pre-existence of the human individual, since nothing is 
produced from nothing, and death demonstrates immortality, 
as being can no more cease to be than nothing can cease to 
be nothing. Being and nonentity are two absolutely irre¬ 
concilable ideas, with this difference, that the wholly negative 
notion of nothingness is derived from the very conception of 
existence, the antithesis of which cannot even be understood 
as an absolute negation, whilst the idea of being cannot even 
be compared with that of nonentity, to say nothing of being 
derived from it. 

Pythagoras believed above all things in the immortality 
of the soul and the eternity of life. The perpetual succession 
of the seasons, of days and nights, of sleeping and waking, 
sufficiently explained to him the phenomenon of death. 
The individual immortality of the human soul consisted, 
according to him, in the persistence of memory. The Bible 
seems to give this idea a divine sanction when it says in the 
Book of Psalms —In memoria czterna erit justus. 

According to Synesius, the dream state proves the indi¬ 
viduality and immateriality of the soul, which, in this con¬ 
dition, creates itself a heaven, a landscape, palaces blazing 
with light, or darksome caverns, according to its affections or 
desires. 

But the immortality of the soul, being one of the most 
consoling doctrines of religion, must be reserved for the 
aspirations of faith, and, consequently, never will be proved 
by facts accessible to the examination of science. Who 
indeed can be assured beforehand of his eternal destiny ? 
Life here below appears to be a school in which we learn how 
to live. It is to be concluded from this that we shall live 
elsewhere. This is a dramatic farce which precedes the grand 
mystery. 1 

A seed is placed in the ground; men pass close by where 
it is hidden, they even walk above it, while it ferments and 

1 See Note 19. 

K 


146 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


germinates for a long time in silence. At length a tiny shoot 
pierces the earth, dividing into leaves, between which a bud 
presently appears. So it remains for another long period, 
but one day it is discovered that the shoot has become a 
sapling, the sapling continues to increase, and slowly grows 
into a tree. By this time the man who sowed it has frequently 
been himself enveloped in earth ; he will never gather the 
fruits of that tree or sit beneath its shade. His body 
nourishes the ground and may cause other trees to germinate; 
his thought increases in heaven, and will make other thoughts 
blossom. For nothing dies, but all is transformed; that 
which is no longer shall again be, but that which was small 
shall be great, and that which was ill-conditioned shall be 
improved. 


II. —The Astral Body. 

We have spoken at length of a substance diffused through 
infinity, that single substance which is heaven and earth, 
in other words, volatilized or fixed, according to its different 
degrees of polarization. We have said that Hermes Tris- 
megistus calls it the Great Telesma. When it produces 
refulgence, it is called light. This also is the substance 
which God created before all things, when He said, Let there 
be light! It is at once matter and motion, a fluid and a 
perpetual vibration. The inherent force which puts it in 
motion is called magnetism. In the infinite this unique 
substance is ether or etherized light. In the stars, which 
it renders magnetic, it becomes astral light. In organised 
creatures, it is magnetic light or fluid. In man, it forms 
the astral body, or plastic mediator, which is a magnet that 
draws or repels the Astral Light under the pressure of the 
will. 

The Astral Light, transformed at the moment of con¬ 
ception into human light, is the first envelope of the soul, 
and it is by combining with the most subtle fluids that it 
forms this etherized body or sidereal phantom which 

Paracelsus speaks of in his philosophy of intuition_ 

Philosophia Sagax. This phantom reproduces with the 
greatest facility the forms corresponding to. ideas. It is the 


THE DOCTRINE OF SPIRITUAL ESSENCES 147 


mirror of imagination, and is nourished by the Astral Light 
precisely as the physical body is nourished by the produce of 
the earth. During sleep it absorbs this light by immer¬ 
sion, and in the waking state by a kind of more or less 
slow respiration. When the phenomena of natural som¬ 
nambulism occur, the plastic mediator is overcharged with 
ill-digested nourishment. The will then, though weighted 
by the torpor of sleep, instinctively drives the mediator 
towards the organs to disengage it, and a reaction occurs 
which is in some way mechanical, and equilibrates the light 
of the mediator by the motion of the body. For this reason 
it is dangerous to awake somnambulists with a start, 
because the congested mediator may then suddenly retire 
towards the common reservoir and wholly abandon the 
organism, which thereby will be separated from the soul, 
and death will result. The somnambulistic state is, therefore, 
extremely dangerous, because, by blending the phenomena 
of the waking state with those of sleep, it constitutes a 
sort of great digression between the two worlds. The 
soul, agitating the springs of individual life, while plunged 
in the universal life, experiences an inexpressible happi¬ 
ness, and would willingly loosen the nervous cords which 
keep it suspended above the current. The situation is 
identical in every species of extasis; if the will should 
plunge therein by an impassioned effort, or even abandon 
itself entirely therein, the subject may remain idiotic or 
paralyzed, and may even die. 

Hallucinations and visions result from injuries inflicted 
on the plastic mediator, and from its local paralysis. Some¬ 
times it ceases to radiate, and substitutes, as it were, con¬ 
densed images for the realities revealed by light; sometimes 
its radiation is excessive, and it condenses outwardly about 
some fortuitous and irregular centre, as the blood does in 
fleshly excrescences; then the chimeras of the brain take 
shape, and seemingly assume a soul; we appear to our¬ 
selves either radiant or deformed, according to the ideal of 
our desires or fears. Hallucinations, being dreams of 
waking persons, always suppose a state analogous to som¬ 
nambulism, but, on the contrary, somnambulism is sleep 
borrowing phenomena from the waking state; hallucina- 


148 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


tion is the waking state still subject in part to the astral 
intoxication of sleep. 

Our fluidic bodies attract and repel one another, accord¬ 
ing to laws conformed to those of electricity. It is this 
which produces instinctive sympathies and antipathies. 
They are thus equilibrated by each other, and this is why 
hallucinations are frequently contagious; abnormal projec¬ 
tions change the direction of luminous currents; the nervous 
excitement of a diseased person takes possession of the 
most sensitive natures about it, a circle of illusions is 
established, and a whole crowd is easily drawn away 
after it. 

The fluidic body can be dissolved or coagulated by the 
volition of the soul acting on the Astral Light of which it 
is formed. It reacts on the nervous system, and thus pro¬ 
duces the motions of the physical body. This light can 
indefinitely dilate and communicate its images to consider¬ 
able distances; it magnetizes objects which are subject to 
the action of man, and by contracting can draw them 
towards him. It can assume all forms evoked by thought, 
and, in those fleeting coagulations of its radiating part 
which have been already referred to, can appear before the 
eyes and even offer a species of resistance to the touch. 
But these manifestations and exercises of the plastic medi¬ 
ator being abnormal, that luminous instrument of precision 
cannot produce them without being distorted, and they 
necessarily cause either permanent hallucination or madness. 

The fluidic body, subject, like the mass of the Astral 
Light, to two opposite movements, attractive on the left 
and repulsive on the right, or reciprocally, in the two sexes, 
produces within us the struggle of opposite tendencies, and 
contributes to anxieties of conscience; frequently, it is 
influenced by the reflections of other spirits, and thus are 
produced either temptations or subtle and unexpected 
graces. This is the explanation of the traditional doctrine 
of two angels who aid and try us. The two forces of the 
Astral Light may be represented by a balance, wherein our 
good intentions for the triumph of justice and the emancipa¬ 
tion of our liberty are poised. 

The astral body is not invariably of the same sex as the 


THE DOCTRINE OF SPIRITUAL ESSENCES 


149 


physical, that is to say, the proportions of the two forces 
often seem to contradict the visible organization; it is this 
which produces the apparent errors of human passions, and 
explains, without in any way justifying them from a moral 
point of view, the amorous eccentricities of Anacreon or 
Sappho. 

The sidereal body, when disengaging itself at death, 
attracts and long preserves, by the sympathy of homo¬ 
geneous things, the reflections of the past life. If a powerful 
sympathetic will can draw it into a particular current, it 
is manifested naturally, for nothing is more natural than 
prodigies. Thus apparitions are produced. But we shall 
develop this point more completely in the chapter devoted 
to necromancy. 


III.— Unity and Solidarity of Spirits. 

According to the Kabbalists, God creates eternally the 
great Adam, the universal and perfect man, who contains 
in a single spirit all spirits and all souls. Intelligences 
therefore live two lives at once, one general, which is 
common to them all, and the other special and individual. 
Solidarity and reversibility among spirits depend therefore 
on their living really in one another, all being illuminated 
by the radiance of the one, all afflicted by the darkness of 
the one. The different degrees of purity among spirits 
correspond to their merits and their efforts to respond to 
grace. They rise from grade to grade by voluntary renuncia¬ 
tion of the egoistic attractions of the lower grades. 

The great Adam is represented by the tree of life, which 
extends above and below the earth by roots and branches; 
the trunk is humanity at large, the various races are the 
branches, and the innumerable individuals are the leaves. 
Each leaf has its own form, its special life, and its share 
of the sap, but it lives by means of the branch alone, as 
the life of the branch itself depends on the trunk. The 
wicked are the dry leaves and dead bark of the tree. They 
fall, decay, and are transformed into manure, which returns 
to the tree through the roots. 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


15a 

The Kabbalists further compare the wicked, or reprobate, to 
the excrement of the great body of humanity. These excretions 
also serve as manure to the earth, which brings forth fruits to 
nourish the body; thus death reverts always to life, and evil 
itself serves for the renewal and nourishment of good. Death 
in this way has no existence, and man never departs from the 
universal life. Those whom we call dead still survive in us, 
and we subsist in them; they are on the earth because we are 
here, and we are in heaven because they are located there. 

The more we live in others, the less need we fear to die. 
Our life, after death, is prolonged on earth in those we love, 
and we draw on heaven to give them tranquillity and peace. 
The communion of spirits in heaven with earth, and on earth 
with heaven, is accomplished naturally, without disturbance 
and without prodigies; universal intelligence is like the sun’s 
light, which falls at once on all the planets, while the planets 
in turn reflect it to illuminate one another in the night. 

The saints and angels have no need of words, nor of any 
sound, to make themselves understood; they think in our 
thoughts and they love in our hearts. The good which they 
have not had the opportunity to accomplish they suggest to 
us, and we perform it for them; they enjoy it in us, and we 
share its recompense with them, for spiritual rewards increase 
in proportion as they are shared, and what we give to another 
we double for ourselves. 

The saints suffer and toil in us, and their perfect beatitude 
will not be attained till the whole of humanity shall be blessed, 
for they are a part of that indivisible humanity which in 
heaven, has a radiant and smiling face, on earth a toiling and 
suffering body, while in hell, which for sages is but a purga¬ 
tory, it has fettered and burning feet. We are all members 
of one body, and the man who endeavours to supplant and 
destroy another man is like the right hand seeking to cut off 
the left through jealousy. He who kills another slays himself, 
he who steals from another defrauds himself, he who wounds 
another maims himself, for others exist in us and we in them. 

The rich weary themselves, detest each other, and turn in 
disgust from life, their wealth itself tortures and burdens them, 
because there are poor in want of bread. The weariness of 
the rich is the distress of the poor, who suffer in their persons. 


THE DOCTRINE OE SPIRITUAL ESSENCES 151 

God exercises His justice by the medium of Nature and His 
mercy by the mediation of His elect. If you thrust your 
hand into the fire, Nature will burn you without pity, but a 
charitable man can dress and soothe the burn. Law is inflex¬ 
ible, but charity is unlimited. Law damns, but charity 
pardons. The gulf of itself will never disgorge its prey, but 
a rope can be let down to him who has allowed himself to fall 
therein. 


IV.— The Great Arcanum of Death, or 
Spiritual Transition. 

We are saddened, frequently, by remembering that the most 
beautiful life must end, and the approach of that terrible 
unknown called death embitters the joys of being. Why are 
we born if existence must be so brief? Why bring up chil¬ 
dren, who must die, with so much care ? This is what human 
ignorance asks in its most frequent and sorrowful doubts. 
This also is what the human embryo might vaguely demand 
at the approach of that birth which is about to usher it into an 
unknown world by despoiling it of its conserving envelope. 
In studying the mystery of birth, we shall find the key to the 
great secret of death. 

Cast by the laws of Nature into the womb of a woman, the 
incarnated spirit slowly wakes therein, and laboriously creates 
for itself those organs which will be indispensable later on, 
though in proportion to their growth they increase its incon¬ 
venience in its present situation. The most blissful period in 
the embryo’s life is that when, under the simple chrysalid form, 
it weaves about it the membrane which serves it as an asylum, 
and floats with it in a nourishing and preserving fluid. Then 
it is free and impassable, it shares in the universal life, and 
receives the impression of the memories of Nature which later 
on will determine the configuration of its body, and the indivi¬ 
duality of its appearance. This happy age may be called the 
childhood of the embryo. 

Its adolescence follows, the human form becomes distinct 
and the sex is determined; a motion takes place in the 
maternal egg, which is like the vague yearnings of the period 
which succeeds childhood. The placenta which is the 


1 5 2 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


extrinsic but real body of the foetus, feels something unknown 
germinating within it, which tends already towards escape by 
breaking through it. The child at this time enters more 
distinctly into the dream life. Its brain, inverted as if it were 
a mirror of the mother’s, reproduces the imaginations of the 
latter so forcibly, that it communicates their form to its own 
members. The mother is then for it what God is for us, an 
unknown, invisible Providence, towards which it aspires, even 
to the identification of itself with all that she desires. It 
depends on her, lives by her, but sees her not, it cannot even 
understand her, and could it philosophize it might possibly 
deny the personal existence and intelligence of that being, who 
for it is as yet only a necessary prison and a preserving 
environment. Little by little, however, this slavery troubles 
it; it grows restless, suffers, worries, and seems aware that its 
life is ending. An hour of anguish and convulsion comes, its 
bonds drop off, it feels itself sliding into the gulf of the 
unknown. This comes to pass, a painful sensation contracts 
it, it heaves a final sob, which changes into a first cry—it is 
dead to the embryonic life, it is born into human life ! 

In the embryonic period it seemed to it that the placenta 
was its body, and it was actually its special embryonic body, 
useless in another stage and rejected as refuse at the moment 
of birth. Our body in human life is like a second envelope 
which is useless to the third life, and for this reason we reject 
it at the moment of our second birth. Human life compared 
with the celestial is truly embryonic. When evil passions 
destroy us, Nature has a miscarriage ; we are born prematurely 
into eternity and are exposed to that terrible dissolution 
which St John calls the second death. 

According to the constant traditions of ecstatics, the abor¬ 
tions of human life remain floating in the terrestrial atmos¬ 
phere, above which they cannot rise, and little by little it 
absorbs and drowns them. They possess a human form, but 
it is always imperfect and mutilated ; to one a hand is wanting 
to another an arm, this one has already but the trunk remain¬ 
ing, that is only a ghastly revolving head. What prevents 
them from ascending heavenward is a wound received during 
earthly life, a moral injury which has resulted in a physical 
deformity, and by this wound little by little their whole nature 


THE DOCTRINE OF SPIRITUAL ESSENCES 153 

ebbs away. The immortal soul will soon be left naked, and 
to conceal its shame, by manufacturing at all costs a new 
vestment, it will be obliged to wade through the exterior 
darkness and slowly traverse the dead sea, that is, the still 
and sleeping waters of the primeval chaos. 

These wounded souls are the larvae of the second embryotic 
state, they nourish their aerial bodies with the vapour of spilt 
blood and fear the points of swords. They frequently attach 
themselves to vicious men and share their life, as the embryo 
lives in the mother’s womb; they can assume the most 
horrible forms, and it is these who appear in the guise of 
demons to the miserable performers of the nameless works of 
black magic. These larvae, fear the light, above all the light 
of spirits. A ray of intelligence is sufficient to overwhelm and 
precipitate them into that dead sea which must not be con¬ 
founded with the asphaltite lake of Palestine. 

All that we here unfold belongs to the hypothetical tradition 
of seers, and can only be affirmed before science in the name 
of that exceptional philosophy which Paracelsus terms the 
philosophy of sagacity —philosophici sagax. Those Kabbalists 
who speak of the world of spirits have simply narrated their 
intuitions in what they call the Light of Glory. Let us expose 
still further the teachings of these masters. 

We read in the Hebrew book, De Revolutionibus Anitnarum , 
that there are souls of three kinds—the daughters of Adam, 
the daughters of angels, and the daughters of sin. There are 
also, according to the same work, three kinds of spirits— 
imprisoned spirits, wandering spirits, and free spirits. Souls 
are sent forth in couples; nevertheless there are some who 
are born widowed, and whose brides are held captive by 
Lilith and Naemah, the queens of the vampires: these are 
souls who have to expiate the temerity of celibate vows. 
Thus, when a man renounces from infancy the love of women, 
he enslaves the bride who was destined for him to the fiends 
of debauch. Souls grow and multiply their species in heaven 
as physical beings do on earth. Immaculate souls are the 
daughters of angels’ kisses. 

When the soul is separated from the body, it necessarily 
changes its environment, since it changes its envelope. The 
individual falls into his final sleep, and lapses into a species 


154 


THE MYSTERIES OE MAGIC 


of dream before awaking on the other side of life. Each 
one then beholds, in a sweet vision or in an appalling night¬ 
mare, the paradise or perdition he believed in during his 
mortal existence. Those who are subject to nightmare can 
form some conception of the horror of the infernal visions 
which are the chastisement of an atrocious creed, taking hold 
of the superstitiously credulous and the ascetically fanatical 
above all. Imagination has created its own tormentors, and 
in the delirium which follows death these monsters confront 
the soul with a frightful reality, surround, attack, and tear it 
to pieces, seeking to devour it in every way. The sage, on 
the contrary, is welcomed by pleasing visions; he imagines 
that he beholds his former friends approaching him and 
smiling. All this, however, is but a dream, as we have said, 
and the soul does not fail to awake from it. Then it has 
changed its environment. It has departed this life clothed 
only in its astral form, it ascends of itself above the atmos¬ 
phere, as the air rises above the water when it escapes 
from a broken vial. The atmospheric air becomes solidified 
beneath the feet of that infinitely more ethereal envelope, the 
weight of which varies, however, in different persons ; while 
some cannot rise above their new earth-plane, others, on the 
contrary, ascend and soar at pleasure in space like the 
eagle. 

But as nothing can enter Heaven save that which comes 
from Heaven, the divine spirit must ultimately return alone 
into the empyrean, 1 and thus two corpses are left by it, in 
the earth and in the atmosphere, the one terrestrial and 
elementary, the other aerial and sidereal—the one already 
inert, the other still animated by the universal movement of 
the soul of the world, but destined to die gradually, being 
absorbed by the astral energies which produced it. The 
terrestrial body is visible, the other is unseen by earthly 
eyes in life, and can only be perceived by the application 
of the Astral Light to the Translucid, as we have explained 
elsewhere. 

When a man has lived well, the astral body evaporates like 
a pure incense, ascending towards the superior regions; but 


1 See Note 20. 


THE DOCTRINE OP SPIRITUAL ESSENCES 155 

if he have lived in sin, his astral body, which holds him 
captive, still seeks the objects of its earthly passions and 
endeavours to resume its life. It torments the dreams of 
young girls, bathes in the vapour of spilt blood, and hovers 
round places where the pleasures of its life elapsed; it still 
keeps watch over the treasures it possessed and concealed; 
it exhausts itself in grievous efforts to manufacture material 
organs and so live again. But the stars inhale and suck it 
up; it feels its understanding diminish, its memory is slowly 
lost, all its being dissolves. Its former vices appear to it, and 
pursue it under monstrous forms; they attack and devour it. 
The unhappy being thus loses in succession all the members 
which were subservient to its iniquities. Then it dies for the 
second and final time, for it forfeits self-consciousness and 
memory. 

Souls which are destined to live, but are not yet completely 
purified, remain imprisoned in their astral body for a longer 
or shorter period, and are burned therein by the odic light, 
which strives to assimilate and dissolve them. It is to liberate 
themselves from this body that such suffering souls occa¬ 
sionally obsess the living and abide within them in a state 
which the Kabbalists call embryotic. Those also who have 
neglected the cultivation of their minds during their mortal 
existence remain after death in a benumbed and torpid 
state, full of pains and disquietude; they recover their self- 
consciousness with difficulty, they dwell in darkness and the 
abyss, unable either to rise or to sink, and incapable of corre¬ 
sponding with heaven or earth. They are gradually drawn 
from this state by the elect, who instruct them, console them, 
and enlighten them; then they are allowed admission to new 
trials whose nature is unknown to us, for it is impossible that 
the same individual should be incarnated twice on the same 
earth . 1 The leaf once fallen from the branch can never be 
regrafted. The aurelia becomes a butterfly, but the butterfly 
never returns into the chrysalis state. Nature shuts the door 
on all that passes and impels life forward. The same morsel 
of bread cannot be twice eaten and digested. Forms pass, 
thought remains, and never does it reassume what it has once 
cast aside. 


1 See Note 21. 


156 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


The Kabbalists compare the spirit to a substance which 
remains fluidic in the divine environment, and under the 
influence of the essential light, though its exterior hardens, 
like a cortex exposed to the air, in the colder regions of the 
rational or of visible forms. These cortices, or petrified 
envelopes, are the cause of errors or evil, which belong to the 
heaviness or hardness of the animal nature. In the Book of 
Zohar, and in that of the Revolution of Souls, perverse spirits 
or evil demons are invariably called cortices. 

The cortices of the spirit world are transparent, those of 
the material are opaque; bodies are only temporary cortices 
from which souls must be liberated ; but those who obey 
the flesh in this life create for themselves an interior body, 
or fluidic cortex, which becomes their prison and their 
torment after death, until the moment when they succeed 
in dissolving it in the heat of the divine light, whither their 
grossness long prevents them from ascending. They reach 
it only after infinite efforts and by the help of the just, who 
stretch forth their hands towards them, and during all this 
time they are devoured by the internal activity of the captive 
spirit as by a fiery furnance. Those who arrive at the pyre 
of expiation immolate themselves thereon, like Hercules 
on Mount (Eta, and thus are delivered from their pains, 
but the courage of the majority fails before this supreme 
trial, which seems to them a second death, more appalling 
than the first, and thus they remain in hell, which is ever¬ 
lasting by right and in fact, but into which souls are never 
precipitated, and in which they are never detained despite 
themselves. 

The dead cannot return to earth any more than a child 
into its mother’s womb. The human soul served, but also 
limited, by its organs, cannot place itself in communication 
with the objects of the visible world except by means of 
these organs. The body is an envelope which is propor¬ 
tional to the material environment in which the soul has 
to abide here below. By limiting the scope of the soul, it 
concentrates and makes its action possible. In effect, a 
soul devoid of body would be everywhere, but everywhere 
in so inappreciable a degree that it could act nowhere; it 
would be lost in infinity, absorbed, and as it were, annihilated 


THE DOCTRINE OF SPIRITUAL ESSENCES 157 

in God. Imagine a drop of fresh water enclosed in a 
globule and thrown into the sea; so long as the globule 
remains unbroken the drop of water will preserve its own 
nature, but if the globule be destroyed, the drop of water 
must be sought in the vast sea. God in creating spirits 
could only endow them with individual self-consciousness 
by providing them with an envelope which centralizes their 
action and prevents it from being dissipated by the very 
fact of its limitation. He alone is the pure spirit which 
disposes of all envelopes and itself has no envelopes. 

After death the soul ascends because its envelope ascends, 
and its activity and consciousness are attached to its 
envelope, as we have said. 

The Kabbalists formulate in a single axiom all the doctrine 
which we have been unfolding here. The spirit, they say, 
clothes itself to come down and unclothes itself to go up. 
The life of intelligences is wholly ascensional; the child in 
its mother’s womb lives a vegetative life, receiving its nourish¬ 
ment by means of a cord which is attached to it, as the 
tree is attached to the earth and at the same time is nourished 
by its root. When the child passes from the vegetative to 
the instinctive and animal life, this cord is broken, and he 
can walk. When the child becomes a man he escapes from 
the bonds of instinct and can act as a reasonable being. 
When the man dies, he is freed from those laws of gravitation 
which pinned him in life to the earth. When the soul has 
expiated its faults, it becomes strong enough to leave the 
exterior darkness of the terrestrial atmosphere, and to rise 
up towards the sun. Then begins the eternal ascent of the 
holy ladder, for the eternity of the elect cannot be idle; 
they progress from virtue to virtue, from felicity to felicity, 
from triumph to triumph, from splendour to splendour. 
They see God as He is, that is, everywhere present in the 
infinite justice of natural law, in the rectitude which ever 
triumphs over all that may bechance, and in the infinite 
charity which is the communion of the elect. The chain of 
being, nevertheless, remains uninterrupted, and those of the 
highest grade can still exercise an influence on the lowest, 
but in accordance with hierarchic order, and in the same 
way that a king, by governing wisely, does good to the least 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


158 

of his subjects. Bonds of sympathy attach them always 
to the earth they have lived on, and on which they are more 
conscious than ever of being alive. From series to series 
prayers ascend and graces flow down without ever mistaking 
their path. But spirits once ascended can descend no more, 
for in the measure that they rise, degrees solidify beneath 
them. “ The great chaos is closed,” says Abraham in the 
parable of Dives, “and those who are here cannot go lower.” 
Extasy may excite the energies of the sidereal body to such 
a pitch that it will bear up with it in its transport the material 
envelope, which proves that ascent is the soul’s law. The 
facts of aerial suspension are possible, but for a man to live 
under earth or in water is unheard of. It would be equally 
impossible for a soul separated from its body to remain, 
even for a single instant, in the heaviness of our atmosphere. 
Therefore the souls of the dead are not around us, as the 
spirit-rappers suppose. Those whom we love may still see 
and appear to us, but only by mirage and reflection in the 
common mirror of the light. Moreover, they can no longer 
interest themselves in mortal things, and are bound to us 
only by such of our sentiments as are sufficiently elevated 
to bear some conformity or analogy to their life in eternity. 


V. —Hierarchy and Classification of Spirits. 

There are minds of exalted species, minds of inferior de¬ 
gree, and minds of a middle rank. Among the highest we 
may distinguish those most elevated, those least elevated, and 
those between the two \ it is the same with the inferior and 
middle degrees. This division gives us three classes and nine 
categories of minds. This natural hierarchy of men has 
created the hypothesis by analogy of the three ranks and nine 
choirs of angels, and also by inversion the three circles and 
nine degrees of hell. We read as follows in an ancient 
clavicle of Solomon, translated out of the Hebrew for the first 
time:— 

“Now will I present to thee the key of the kingdom of 
spirits; it is the same as that of the mysterious numbers of 
Jetzirah. Spirits are governed by the natural and universal 


THE DOCTRINE OF SPIRITUAL ESSENCES 159 

hierarchy of things. Three command three by means of 
three. Know, however, that the principalities, virtues, and 
powers of Heaven are not persons but dignities. They are 
the degrees of the holy ladder on which spirits ascend and 
descend. Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and others, are not 
names but titles. The first number is one; the first of the 
divine conceptions named Sephiroth is Kether or the Crown. 
The first category of spirits is that of Hajoth Haccadosch, 
or the intelligences of the Tetragram the letters of which 
are represented by the mysterious animals of Ezekiel’s pro¬ 
phecy. Their empire is that of unity and synthesis, and 
they correspond to understanding. Their adversaries are 
Thamiel or the Two-headed, demons of revolt or anarchy, 
whose two chiefs, ever waging war with one another, are 
Satan and Moloch. 

“ The second number is two; the second Sephira is 
Chochmah, or Wisdom. The spirits of wisdom are the 
Ophanim, a name signifying wheels, because all discharge 
functions in heaven like vast wheels studded with stars. 
Their empire is that of harmony, and they correspond to 
reason. Their adversaries are the Chaigidel, or cortices 
which cleave to material and illusory appearances. Their 
chief, or rather guide, for evil spirits obey no one, is Beel¬ 
zebub, whose name signifies the God of flies, because flies 
swarm round putrefying carcases. 

“ The third number is three; the third Sephira is Binah, 
or Understanding. The spirits of Binah are the Aralim, or 
strong ones. Their empire is the creation of ideas, and they 
correspond to activity and energy of thought. Their adver¬ 
saries are the Satariel, or velatours, demons of absurdity, 
intellectual sloth, and mystery. The chief of the Satariel is 
Lucifuge, called falsely and antiphrastically Lucifer, as the 
Eumenides, who are the furies, are called the benevolent 
goddesses. 

“ The fourth number is four ; the fourth Sephira is Gedulah 
or Chesed, magnificence or benignity. The spirits of Gedulah 
are the Haschmalim, or lucid ones. Their empire is that of 
beneficence, and they correspond to imagination. Their 
adversaries are Gamchicoth, or the disturbers of souls; the 
leader or guide of these demons is Astaroth or Astarte, the 


160 THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 

obscene Venus of the Assyrians, who is represented with the 
head of an ass or bull and the breasts of a woman. 

“ The fifth number is five; the fifth Sephira is Geburah, or 
Justice. The spirits of Geburah are the Seraphim, or fiery 
spirits of zeal. Their empire is that of the punishment of 
crimes. They correspond to the faculty of comparison and 
selection. Their adversaries are the Galab or incendiaries, 
genii of wrath and sedition, whose chief is Asmodeus, who is 
also called the black Samael. 

“ The sixth number is six. The sixth Sephira is Tiphereth, 
Supreme Beauty. The spirits of Tiphereth are the Malachim 
or kings, and their empire is that of universal harmony; they 
correspond to judgment. Their adversaries are the Targari- 
rim or disputatious, whose chief is Belphegor. 

“ The seventh number is seven; the seventh Sephira is 
Netsah, or Victory. The spirits of Netsah are the Elohim, 
or gods, that is, the representatives of God. Their empire 
is that of life and progress, and they correspond to the 
sensorium, or to sensibility. Their adversaries are the Harab- 
Serapel, or death-ravens, whose chief is Baal. 

“The eighth number is eight; the eighth Sephira is Hod, or 
Eternal Order. The spirits of Hod are the Beni-Eloim, or 
sons of the gods. Their empire is that of order, and they 
correspond to deep feeling. Their adversaries are the Samael, 
or broilers, whose chief is Adramelech. 

“The ninth number is nine; the ninth Sephira is Jesod, or 
the fundamental basis. The spirits of Jesod are the Cherubim, 
or angels who fructify the earth, and are represented in Heb¬ 
rew symbolism under the figure of bulls. Their empire is 
that of productiveness, and they correspond to correct ideas. 
Their adversaries are the Gamaliel or obscene, whose queen, 
Lilith, is the demon of abortions. 

“ The tenth number is ten; the tenth Sephira is Malchuth, 
or the realm of forms. The spirits of Malchuth are the Ischim 
or virile, who are the souls of the saints, and their chief is 
Moses. Their adversaries are the wicked, who obey Nahema, 
the demon of impurity. The wicked are represented by the 
five accursed nations which Joshua had to exterminate. 
Joshua or Jehoshua the saviour is a type of the Messiah. 
His name is composed of the letters of the Divine Tetragram 


THE DOCTRINE OF SPIRITUAL ESSENCES 161 


changed into the Pentagram by the addition of the letter 
Schin— 7 WT\\ Each letter of this Pentagram represents a 
faculty of goodness assailed by one of the five accursed 
nations. For the actual history of God’s people is the 
allegorical legend of humanity. The five accursed nations 
are the Amalekites or aggressors, the Geburim or violent, the 
Raphaim or poltroons, the Nephilim or voluptuous, and the 
Anakim or anarchists. The Anakim are conquered by the 
jod, which is the paternal sceptre ; the violent are conquered 
by the He, which is maternal mildness; the cowardly are 
conquered by the Vau, which is the sword of Michael, and 
generation by labour and suffering ; the voluptuous are 
vanquished by the second He, which is the painful child¬ 
bearing of the mother. The aggressive, finally, are conquered 
by the Schin, which is the fire of the Saviour and the equili¬ 
brating law of justice. 

“ The princes of perverse spirits are the false gods whom 
they adore. Hell has, therefore, no other government than 
the blind law which punishes perversity and corrects error, 
for false gods exist only in the false opinion of their worship¬ 
pers. Baal, Belphegor, Moloch, Adramelek were idols of the 
Assyrians—soulless idols, long since annihilated, whose names 
alone remain. The true God has conquered all these demons, 
as truth triumphs over error. This has taken place in men’s 
opinions, and the wars waged by Michael against Satan are 
emblems of the evolution and progress of minds. The devil 
is ever a refuse god. The idolatries of to-day were religions 
in the past; superannuated idolatries are superstitions and 
sacrileges. The pantheon of fashionable phantoms is the 
heaven of the ignorant. The sewer of phantoms, with which 
even folly desires no further connection, is hell. But all this 
exists only in the imagination of the crowd. Heaven for the 
wise is the Supreme Reason, as hell is foolishness. Here it 
will be seen that we make use of the word heaven in the 
mystical sense which is attributed to it by contrasting it with 
the word hell. To evoke phantoms we need only get drunk 
or go mad. Spectres are the familiars of intoxication and 
vertigo. The phosphorescence of the imagination, abandoned 
to all the vagaries of over-excited and diseased nerves, swarms 
with the monstrosities of absurd visions. Hallucination may 

L 


62 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


also be attained by the confusion of sleeping and waking 
through the graduated use of stimulants and narcotics; but 
such works are crimes against nature. Wisdom dispels 
phantoms and enables us to communicate with superior intel¬ 
ligences by the contemplation of natural laws and the study 
of sacred numbers.” 

Here King Solomon addresses his son Roboam :— 

“ Remember, my son, that the fear of Adonai is only the 
beginning of wisdom. Maintain and preserve those who 
are devoid of understanding in the fear of Adonai which 
will give and ensure thee my crown. But learn thyself to 
triumph over fear by wisdom, and spirits will come down out 
of heaven to serve thee. I, Solomon, thy father, king of Israel 
and Palmyra, have sought and obtained for my portion the 
holy Chochmah, which is the wisdom of Adonai. And I have 
become the king of spirits, both of heaven and earth, the 
master of the powers of the air and the living souls in the sea, 
because I possess the key of the secret Gates of Light. I 
have accomplished sublime things by the power of the Schema 
Hamphorasch, and by the thirty-two paths of Jetzirah. Num¬ 
ber, weight, and measure determine all forms ; the substance is 
single, and God eternally creates it. Blessed is he who com¬ 
prehended! letters and numbers! Letters are numbers, 
numbers notions, notions powers, and powers are the Elohim. 
The synthesis of the Elohim is the Schema. The Schema is 
one, its pillars are two, its power is three, its shape four, its 
reflection gives eight, which, multiplied by three, will produce 
the twenty-four thrones of wisdom. A three-gemmed crown 
is laid on each throne, each gem bears a name, each name 
represents an absolute idea. There are seventy-two names on 
the twenty-four crowns of the Schema. 

“ Thou shalt write these names on thirty-six talismans, two 
on each talisman, one on each side. Thou shalt divide these 
talismans into four series of nine each, according to the 
number of the letters of the Schema. On the first series thou 
shalt engrave the letter Jod, represented by the Blossoming 
Rod of Aaron; on the second the letter He, represented by 
the cup of Joseph; on the third the Vau, represented by the 
sword of David my father; and on the fourth the final He, 
represented by the golden shekel. The thirty-six talismans 


THE DOCTRINE OF SPIRITUAL ESSENCES 163 


shall be a book containing all natural secrets, and angels and 
demons shall speak to thee in its diverse combinations.” 


VI.—Fluidic Phantoms and their Mysteries. 

Paracelsus 1 tells us that the vital fluid emitted in dreams 
or at regular periods by the celibates of either sex peoples the 
air with phantoms. We assume that we are here indicating 
with sufficient perspicuity, after the manner of the masters, 
the supposititious origin of such larvae and that additional 
details are unneeded. These larvae possess an aerial body 
formed from the steam of blood. For this reason they seek 
out spilt blood, and were formerly nourished by the smoke 
of sacrifices. They are the monstrous offspring of impure 
nightmares, once known as incubi and succubi. When 
sufficiently condensed to be visible, they are a mere vapour 
tinged by the reflection of an image ; they have no individual 
life, but they imitate the life of those who evoke them, as 
the shadow imitates the body. They are not spirits, for they 
are mortal. They are a kind of animated mirage, imperfect 
emanations of human life. The traditions of black magic 
represent them as the offspring of the celibacy of Adam ; 
all these notions are so ancient that we find traces of them 
in Hesiod, who expressly forbids linen stained by any defile¬ 
ment to be dried before fire. 

Persons obsessed by phantoms are usually inflamed by an 
over-rigorous abstinence or weakened by the excesses of 
debauch. Such larvte are above all produced round idiots 
and beings devoid of morality whose isolation abandons them 
to irregular habits. The ancients designated them under 
different names—larvae, lemures, &c. They are the abortions 
of the vital light, plastic mediators devoid of body and soul, 
born of mental excesses and physical derangements. The 
cohesion of the parts of their fantastic organisms is so feeble 
that they fear a strong wind, large fires, and above all the 
points of swords. They become in a certain sense the 
vaporous appendices of the real bodies of their parents, for 

1 See Note 22, 


164 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


they live only by the life of those who have created or those 
who have appropriated them by evocation, so that if their 
semblance of bodies be wounded, the father may be really 
hurt, as the unborn child is actually disfigured by the imagina¬ 
tions of its mother. The whole world is full of phenomena 
which justify these extraordinary revelations and cannot be 
otherwise explained. 

These larvae attract to themselves the vital heat of portly 
persons, and rapidly exhaust the weak. Thence come the 
histories of vampires, which are terribly real, and periodically 
established beyond doubt, as indeed is well known. It is for 
this reason that on the approach of mediums, that is, of 
persons obsessed by larvae, a coldness is felt in the air. 

These roving mediators can be attracted by certain diseased 
persons who are in fatal sympathy with them, and afford them 
a more or less durable existence. They then serve as supple¬ 
mentary instruments of the wills of such people, never, how¬ 
ever, for their cure, but invariably to mislead and hallucinate 
them further. 

If physical embryos have the faculty of assuming the forms 
impressed on them by the mother’s imagination, still more are 
these wandering fluidic phantoms prodigiously variable, and 
transformable with astonishing facility. Their tendency to 
create themselves a body in order to attract a soul causes 
them to condense and naturally assimilate the corporeal 
molecules which float in the atmosphere. Thus, in coagulat¬ 
ing the vapour of blood they reproduce blood, that blood 
which frenzied hcillucines behold flowing from pictures or 
statues. But it is not the hallucinated alone who see it. 
Vintras and Rose Tamisier are neither impostors nor people 
who are subject to vertigo; blood really flows; doctors 
examine and analyze it; it is true human blood, and whence 
comes it? Can it form spontaneously in the atmosphere? 
Can it issue naturally from marble, from an oil painting, or 
from a Host? Certainly not; this blood has circulated in 
veins, then has been spilt, evaporated, and dried up; the 
serum has become vapour, the globules have passed into 
impalpable dust, the whole has floated aud hovered in the air, 
and has then been drawn into the current of a specified 
electro-magnetism. The serum has again become liquid, it 


The doctrine of spiritual essences 165 

has reassumed and imbibed new globules, which have been 
coloured by the Astral Light, and blood has flown. Photo¬ 
graphy has abundantly proved that images are real modifica¬ 
tions of light. Now, there exists an accidental and fortuitous 
photography which produces, from the wandering mirages in 
the atmosphere, durable impressions on the leaves of trees, 
on their wood, and even in the heart of stones: it is thus 
those natural figures are found to which Gaffarel has conse¬ 
crated several pages in his book on “ Unheard of Curiosities,” 
those stones to which, under the name of Gamahfo , a secret 
virtue is attributed ; thus are accomplished those writings and 
drawings which so highly astonish the observers of fluidic 
phenomena. They are astral photographs, traced by the 
imagination of mediums, with or without the concurrence of 
fluidic larvae. 

The existence of these larvae has been demonstrated to us 
in a decisive manner by an exceedingly curious experience. 
Several persons, in order to test the magic power of Home, 
the American, requested him to evoke relatives whom they 
pretended to have lost, when they really had never existed. 
The spectres did not fail to respond to the appeal, and the 
phenomena which commonly followed the evocation of the 
medium were fully manifested. This experience alone suffices 
to convict those who believe in the intervention of spirits in 
these strange occurrences of lamentable credulity and formal 
error. In order for the dead to return, it is before all things 
imperative that they should have existed, and demons would 
not be so easily made the dupes of our mystifications. 

Like all Catholics, we believe in the existence of spirits of 
darkness, but we know also that Divine Power has made 
darkness their eternal prison, and that the Redeemer beheld 
Satan fall from Heaven like a thunderbolt. If demons tempt 
us, it is by the wilful complicity of our own bad passions; 
they are not permitted to insult God’s empire and disturb the 
eternal order of Nature by useless and foolish manifestations. 

Diabolical characters and signatures produced uncon¬ 
sciously by mediums are evidently no proof either of a tacit 
or formal compact between these diseased persons and the 
intelligences of the abyss. Such signs have served in all 
times to represent the astral vertigo, and have remained in 


i66 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


the mirage state among the reflections of the misguided light. 
Nature has also her reminiscences and sends us the same 
signs corresponding to the same ideas. In all this there is 
nothing supernatural or infernal. 

“ How can you expect me to admit,” the Abbe Charvoz, 
the first convert of Vintras, said to us, “ that Satan would dare 
impress his hideous stigmata on the consecrated species 
which have become the very body of Christ ? ” We declared 
at once that it would be equally impossible for us to pro¬ 
nounce in favour of so horrible a blasphemy, but, neverthe¬ 
less, the signs printed in characters of blood on the Hosts of 
Vintras, consecrated regularly by Charvoz, were those which 
in black magic are absolutely recognised as the signatures of 
demons. 

Astral writings are often ridiculous or obscene. The pre¬ 
tended spirits, questioned on the greatest mysteries of Nature, 
frequently reply by a coarse expression, once heroic in the 
military mouth of Cambronne. The designs traced by pencils 
of their own accord often reproduce those ill-formed priapuses 
which the pale voyou , to borrow the picturesque expression of 
Auguste Barbier, sketches, to the sound of his own whistling, 
along the great walls of Paris, fresh proof of what we have 
advanced, namely, that mind in no way presides over these 
manifestations, and that it would be above all a sovereign 
absurdity to recognise the intervention of disembodied souls. 

The Jesuit, Paul Saufidius, who has written on the manners 
and customs of the Japanese, narrates a very remarkable 
anecdote. A troup of Japanese pilgrims, when crossing a 
desert, one day beheld a band of spectres whose number was 
equal to that of the pilgrims, and they walked at the same 
pace. These spectres, at first undefined and like larvae, 
assumed as they approached all the semblance of the human 
form. They soon encountered the pilgrims, and mingled 
with them, gliding in silence between their ranks; then the 
Japanese saw themselves duplicated, each phantom having 
become the perfect image and, as it were, mirage of each 
pilgrim. The affrighted people cast themselves prostrate on 
the ground, and the bonze who conducted them fell to 
praying for them with great contortions and great cries. 
When the pilgrims ventured to rise, the apparitions had 


THE DOCTRINE OF SPIRITUAL ESSENCES 167 

disappeared, and the pious band could continue its journey 
freely. This phenomenon, the actuality of which we do 
not call in question, presents the two-fold character of a 
mirage and a sudden projection of astral larvse, occasioned by 
the heat of the atmosphere and the exhaustion of the pilgrims. 

Doctor Brierre de Boismont, in his curious work on 
“Hallucinations,” narrates that a perfectly sensible man, 
who had never been subject to visions, was one morning 
tormented by a most insupportable nightmare. He beheld 
in his room a monstrous ape, horrible to see, who ground his 
teeth at him and made the most frightful contortions. He 
woke with a start, it was broad day, he sprang out of bed, 
and was terrified at finding the frightful object of his dream 
actually present before him, perfectly resembling that of the 
nightmare, equally grotesque, equally alarming, and making 
the same grimaces. The person in question could not credit 
his eyes; he remained motionless for half-an-hour, watching 
this singular phenomenon and wondering whether he was in a 
high fever or insane. He at length approached the fantastic 
animal to touch it, and the apparition vanished. 

Cornelius Gemma, in his “ Critical Universal History,” 
tells us that in the year 454, in the Island of Candia, the 
phantom of Moses appeared to the Jews on the sea coast, 
and invited them to follow him, pointing with his finger 
towards the horizon in the direction of the Holy Land. He 
had his luminous horns on his forehead and his wand in his 
hand. The news of this prodigy spread, and the Israelites in 
a crowd rushed towards the coast. All saw or pretended to 
see the marvellous apparition; they numbered twenty thou¬ 
sand, says the chronicler, whom we suspect of a slight 
exaggeration in this respect. Their heads are turned at 
once, imaginations are excited, they expect a more glorious 
miracle than w r as formerly the passage of the Red Sea ; they 
form in a serried column and direct their course towards the 
water; those behind push those in front with frenzied 
eagerness ; they believe themselves beholding the pretended 
Moses walking on the water. A terrible disaster resulted, for 
nearly all this multitude sank, and the hallucination was 
extinguished only with the life of the majority of the unhappy 
visionaries. 


i68 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Human thought creates what it imagines ; the phantoms 
of superstition project their real deformity in the Astral Light 
and live by the very terrors they produce. They owe their 
being to the delusions of imagination and to the aberration of 
the senses, and are never brought forth in the presence of 
any one who knows and can expose the mystery of their 
monstrous birth. 


VII.— Sum of Kabbalistic Pneumatics. 

Spirits are secondary or created intelligences. They are 
of three kinds—fixed, wandering, and composite. The fixed 
are pure spirits, emancipated from the laws which govern 
matter. The wandering are those which float in the astral 
light. The composite are wandering spirits labouring to 
become fixed, and having partially accomplished their pur¬ 
pose. Among fixed spirits may be distinguished the most 
pure, the purer, and the pure; among composite, the dominat¬ 
ing, the militant, and those dominated; among the wander¬ 
ing, the leaders, the inconstant, and the entrained. The 
fixed spirits are angels; the composite are intelligent men; 
the wandering are foolish men. Spirits attract and rule one 
another in hierarchic order. They are joined by chains and 
circles. To enter into a circle is to swear with the spirits of 
the circle. When conjuring superior spirits we do not 
attract them to us, but we rise towards them. Conjuration 
by evocations can only obtain in the case of inferior spirits. 
To conjure the higher spirits we must give ourselves to them; 
to conjure lower spirits by evocation, we must force them 
to give themselves to us. We evoke higher spirits by the 
offering of sacrifices ; more correctly, in this way we lead 
them to evoke us. We evoke lower spirits by flattering their 
desires or their appetites. Words are merely formulae which 
serve to fix the will. Spirits inferior to man are elementaries 
and wanderers of the lowest order. They are those termed 
demons by the old theurgists. Such demons are mortal, and 
seek to live at our expense; they are attracted by spermatic 
and sanguineous effusions, the fume of meats, empty shells, 
and they fear the points and edges of swords. The hierarchy 


THE DOCTRINE OF SPIRITUAL ESSENCES 169 

of spirits is infinite. It begins with God wherein is nothing 
which begins, that is to say, it begins not. 

The stars have astral souls, the suns have solar souls, and 
the systems are ruled by leaders or Egregores, the living 
Elohim, the gods that are within God. The life of spirits is 
a continual ascent and initiation; they ascend and descend 
upon the great symbolical ladder of Jacob. The angels or 
spiritual governors of stars pass up to the government of suns 
and are replaced by the flower of souls. The chiefs of souls 
are the successive Kings of humanity. The chief of the souls 
of earth bears the name of Mitatron-Sarpanim, which signifies 
prince of lights. The chief of souls does not die, but is 
exalted living into heaven. In times subsequent to the 
creation of Moses, Henoch was the first exalted to the rank 
of Mitatron-Sarpanim. After Henoch, Moses reigned; after 
Moses, Elias; after Elias, Jesus. All the Mitatron are 
destined to reign twice, and they return to earth after passing 
through every globe of our solar system. For this reason the 
return of Henoch and Elias will precede the second advent of 
Christ. In his first advent Jesus was revealed as pontiff, in 
His second he will be manifested as King. He has been the 
Christ; He has yet to be the Messiah whom the Jews rightly 
expect. It was Enoch who gave the divine law to Moses on 
Sinai; Moses and Elias upon Tabor instructed Jesus in the 
grand mysteries of the Christian revelation. Jesus transmitted 
the initiation to St John the Evangelist, and hence this apostle 
must tarry till the second coming of His master. In times 
of decay, inferior spirits manifest like worms on corpses. 
They are evoked by corruption and by delivering ourselves to 
them that they may devour us. These are the vampires of 
diseased souls. Such disintegrations ever precede and 
herald the advent on earth of a regenerating spirit in the 
person of the solar Mitatron. Talking tables and rapping 
spirits have announced the return of Enoch. He will come 
when the papacy shall have lost its authority in the world and 
Kabbalistic scenes shall glitter. The advent of Elias will 
follow closely upon that of Enoch,, and then Jesus the Saviour 
of the world will appear a second time upon the earth. He 
will be preceded by the Antichrist, whose mission will be to 
prepare the great temporal empire of the Gospel revealer. 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


170 

The astral light swarms with elementary spirits; a new crea¬ 
tion is preparing. Already the Keys of Solomon have been 
recovered and the mysteries of transcendental masonry are 
explained. A school, whereof the beginnings are yet obscure 
and almost invisible, is forming in the Slavonic empire, in 
Germany, and in France. A century hence this school will 
count seven thousand adepts, and its last Grand Master will 
be Enoch, who will appear in the year 2000 of the Christian 
era. Then Messianism, of which he is the destined precursor 
will flourish on the earth for a thousand years. These 
previsions are the summary of all prophecies and all Kabbal- 
istic calculations. 


PART V 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 1 


I.—Elementary Spirits and the Ritual of their 
Conjuration. 

The material elements, analogous to the divine elements, are 
popularly classified as four, are explained as two, and really 
exist as three. The magical elements are in alchemy salt, 
mercury, sulphur, and azoth; in the Kabbalah, the Macro- 
prosopus, the Microprosopus, and the two Mothers; in 
symbolism, the man, eagle, lion, and bull; in old physics, 
according to common notions and nomenclature, air, water, 
earth, and fire. But in magical science the water is no 
ordinary water, the fire is not merely fire, &c. These 
expressions conceal a more exalted meaning. The primitive 
substance is the only simple one ; there is, therefore, but one 
material element, and this is invariably manifested in tetradic 
phases. Air and earth represent the male principle, fire and 
water are connected with the female. To these four elemen¬ 
tary forms correspond the four following philosophical 
conceptions :— 

Mind, 

Matter, 

Motion, 

Rest. • 

All science consists actually in the comprehension of these 
four things, which alchemy has reduced to three. 

1 See Note 23. 



IJ2 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


The Absolute, 

The Fixed, 

The Volatile, 

while the Kabbalah connects them with the essential idea of 
God, who is absolute reason, necessity, and liberty, a triadic 
notion expressed in the secret books of the Jews. 

The Astral Light is the physical soul of the four elements, 
which are the four polar forces of the universal magnet, and 
arQ represented in symbolism by the Cross. They are the 
expression of two fundamental laws, resistance and motion. 
The beginning of the comprehension of the magnum opus is 
that of the four philosophic elements, which are primarily 
intellectual, for they are designated and realized by the 
Logos, the supreme formulation of reason. The water of 
the philosophers is the divisible substance, and the force 
also which divides and dissolves it; it corresponds to the 
Kabbalistic woman. The philosophic earth is the quotient 
which coagulates on issuing from the divisor. Fire is move¬ 
ment ; it is to water as one is to three, and it corresponds to 
the serpent. Air is the matrix of fire ; it is to earth as a half 
is to eight. 

The symbolic tetrad, represented in the mysteries of 
Memphis and Thebes by the four-fold sphinx, corresponded 
to the four elements. The chalice held by the man, or 
aquarius, corresponded to water; air was represented by the 
circle, or nimbus, which surrounds the head of the celestial 
eagle; fire by the wood which feeds it, by the tree which is 
fructified with the heat of the sun and earth, and by the 
royal sceptre symbolized in the lion ; earth is represented by 
the sword of Mithra, who annually immolates the sacred 
bull, and mingles its blood with the sap which fills all earthly 
fruits. 

The four elementary forms roughly divide and specialize 
the created spirits which the. universal movement disengages 
from the central fire. In fact’ created spirits, being called to 
emancipation through trials, are placed from their birth 
between these four forces, and it is in their power to declare 
for good or evil, to choose life or death. To find the fixed 
point, that is, the moral centre of the Cross, is the first 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


i 73 


problem they are set to solve, and their first conquest is that 
of their individual liberty. They begin, therefore, by being 
drawn some towards the north, others towards the south, 
some towards the right, others towards the left, and so long 
as they are not free agents, they cannot have the use of 
reason, nor can they be incarnated except in animal forms. 
These unemancipated spirits, the slaves of the four elements, 
are what the Kabbalists call elementary demons, or occult 
elements, and they people those elements which correspond 
to their condition of servitude. Sylphs, undines, gnomes, 
and salamanders, therefore, really exist, some wandering and 
seeking incarnation, others incarnate and living on the earth. 
These are vicious and imperfect men. 1 

The Astral Light is saturated with souls, which it releases^, 
as we have said, in the incessant generation of existences; 
their imperfect wills can be dominated and employed by 
stronger minds, thus forming vast invisible chains, which may 
occasion or determine great elementary commotions. The 
phenomena established in trials for sorcery have no other 
causes. The elementary spirits are like . children ; they 
torment those who concern themselves about them, unless at 
any rate they are governed by a lofty reason and excessive 
severity. It is these beings who frequently occasion our 
disturbing or fantastic dreams, who produce the movements 
of the divining rod, and the raps on our walls and furniture ; 
but they can never manifest thoughts other than our own, 
and if we are not thinking at all, they address us with all the 
incoherence of dreams. They reproduce good and evil 
indifferently, because they are devoid of free will, and are 
consequently irresponsible agents; they appear to ecstatics 
and somnambulists under imperfect and fleeting forms, 
occasioning the nightmares of St Anthony, and probably the 
visions of Swedenborg; they are neither damned nor guilty, 
they are innocent and curious, and as they may be used or 
abused like children or animals, the magus who employs 
their services assumes a terrible responsibility, for he must 
expiate in his own person all the evil he has caused them to 
perform, and the magnitude of his torments will be propor- 


1 See Note, 24. 


T 74 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


tioned to the extent of the power which he has exercised by 
their mediation. 

To rule the elementary spirits, and become thus the king of 
the occult elements, the four trials of antique initiation must 
be undergone; and, as these initiations exist no longer, they 
must be replaced by analogous actions, as, for instance, by 
exposing oneself fearlessly in a burning house, by crossing a 
precipice on a plank or the trunk of a tree; by climbing a 
perpendicular mountain during a storm ; by vigorously doing 
battle with a cascade or dangerous whirlpool. He who is 
afraid of the water will never reign over the undines ; he who 
shrinks from the flames will never command salamanders ; let 
him who is subject to giddiness leave the sylphs in peace, and 
forbear from irritating the gnomes, for inferior spirits will obey 
no power which has not been proved their master in their own 
individual element. 

When courage and perseverance have acquired this incon- 
testible power, the Logos of will-force must be imposed on the 
elements by particular consecrations of the air, fire, water, and 
earth, and this is the indispensable beginning of all magical 
operations. The air is exorcized by breathing towards the 
four cardinal points, and saying :— 

Spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas, et inspiravit in faciem 
hominis spiraculum vitae. Sit Michael dux meus et Sabtabiel 
servus meus, in luce et per lucem. Fiat verbum halitus meus ; 
et imperabo spiritibus aeris hujus, et refraenabo equos solis 
voluntate cordis mei, et cogitatione mentis meae, et nutu oculi 
dextri. Exorciso te, creatura aeris, per Pentagrammaton et in 
nomine Tetragrammaton, in quibus sunt voluntas firma et 
fides recta. Amen. Sela, fiat. 

The sylphide prayer must be then recited after tracing their 
sign in the air with an eagle’s quill. 

Prayer of the Sylphs. 

Spirit of Light, Spirit of Wisdom, thou whose breath doth 
impart and recall the shape of every object; thou before whom 
the life of all creatures is a shadow which transforms, and a 
vapour which passes away; thou who sittest upon the clouds 
and fliest on the wings of the wind; thou whose outbreathing 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


75 


peoples the limitless immensity; thou whose inbreathing draws 
back within thee all that emanated from thee; unending 
movement in the everlasting stability, be thou blessed for ever! 
We praise thee and bless thee in the inconstant empire of the 
created light, of shadows, reflections, and images, and we 
aspire without ceasing towards thine immutable and imperish¬ 
able splendour. May the beam of thine intelligence and the 
warmth of thy love come down on us; then shall the unsteady 
be established, the shadow be substance, the spirit of the air 
shall receive a soul, and dream be thought! No more shall 
we be swept away by the tempest, but shall curb with a bridle 
the winged steeds of the morning, and direct the course of the 
evening winds, that we may fly away and come into thy pre¬ 
sence ! O Spirit of spirits, O everlasting Soul of souls, O 
Imperishable Breath of Life, creative Sigh, Mouth which dost 
breathe forth and draw in the life of all beings in the ebb and 
flow of thine eternal speech, which is the divine sea of motion 
and truth ! Amen. 


Water is exorcized by the laying on of hands, by breath, and 
by speech, mixing consecrated salt with a little of the ash 
which is left in the incense pan. The aspergillus is made of 
branches of vervain, periwinkle, sage, mint, ash, and basil, tied 
by a thread taken from a virgin’s distaff; the handle must be 
of hazelwood which has not yet borne fruit, and thereon the 
characters of the seven spirits must be graved with the magic 
awl. The salt and ashes of the incense must be separately 
consecrated by saying— 

Over the Salt. 

In isto sale sit sapientia, et ab omni corruptione servet 
mentes nostras et corpora nostra, per Hochmael et in virtute 
Ruach-Hochmael; recedant ab isto fantasmata hylae ut sit sal 
coelestis, sal terrse, et terra salis, ut nutrietur bos triturans et 
addat spei nostrae cournua tauri volantis. Amen. 

Over the Ash. 

Revertatur cinis ad fontem aquarum viventium, et fiat 
terra fructificans, et germinet arborem vitae per tria nomina, 



76 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


quae sunt Netsah, Hod, et Jesod, in principio et in fine, per 
Alpha et Omega qui sunt in spiritu Azoth. Amen. 

In mingling the Water , Salt , and Ash. 

In sale sapientiae aeternae, et in aqua regenerationis, et in 
cinere germinante terram novam, omnia fiant per Eloim 
Gabriel, Raphael, et Uriel, in saecula et aeonas. Amen. 

Exorcism of the Water. 

Fiat firmamentum in medio aquarum et separet aquas 
ab aquis, quae superius sicut quae inferius, et quae inferius 
sicut quae superius, ad perpetranda miracula rei unius. 
Sol ejus pater est, luna mater, et ventus hanc gestavit in 
utero suo, ascendit a terra ad coelum et rursus a coelo in 
terram descendit. Exorciso te, creatura aquae, ut sis mihi 
speculum Dei vivi in operibus ejus, et fons vitae, et ablutio 
peccatorum. Amen. 

Prayer of the Undines. 

Terrible King of the Sea, thou who bearest the keys of 
the floodgates of heaven, and dost imprison the waters of 
the under world in their earthy caverns; King of the deluge 
and of the floods of the springtime; thou who unsealest the 
sources of the streams and fountains ; thou who commandest 
the moisture, which is like the blood of earth, to become the 
sap of plants; we adore and invoke thee! Speak unto us 
in the great tumult of the sea, and we shall tremble before 
thee; speak also in the ripple of limpid waters, and we shall 
long for thy love ! O Immensity, wherein all rivers of life 
are lost, to be always reborn in thee ! Ocean of infinite 
perfections, height which reflects itself in the depth, depth 
which projects itself on the height, lead us to true life by 
love and intelligence ! Lead us to immortality by renuncia¬ 
tion, that we may be worthy one day to offer thee water, 
blood, and tears, for the remission of sins ! Amen. 


Fire is exorcized by casting salt, incense, white resin, 
camphor, and sulphur therein and pronouncing, thrice the 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


177 


three names of the genii of fire— Michael, king of the sun 
and lightning; Samael, king of volcanos; and Anael, king 
of the Astral Light; then by reciting the Prayer of the 
Salamanders. 


Prayer of the Salamanders. 

Immortal, everlasting, ineffable, and uncreated Father of 
all things, who art borne on the ever-rolling chariot of 
worlds revolving unceasingly ; ruler of the ethereal im¬ 
mensities, where the throne of thy power is established, 
from the altitude of which thine insupportable eyes discern 
all things, and thy holy and beautiful ears do hear all things, 
listen to thy children, whom thou hast loved before the ages 
began ! For thy golden, overwhelming, everlasting majesty 
shines over the world and over the starry Heaven; thou art 
exalted above them, O Glittering Fire! Thence thou 
illuminest and dost commune with thyself by thine own 
splendour, and there issue from thine essence inexhaustible 
streams of life to nourish thine infinite spirit, which itself 
doth nourish all things, and is that unfailing storehouse of 
substance ever ready for generation, which adapts and 
appropriates the forms thou hast impressed on it from the 
beginning. From this spirit the three most holy kings 
who surround thy throne and form thy court, derive their 
immemorial origin, O Universal Father! O sole and only 
father of beatified immortals and mortals ! 

Thou hast in particular created powers which are 
marvellously similar to thine own eternal thought, and 
thine adorable essence ; thou hast made them superior to 
the angels who proclaim thy will to the world; finally, 
thou hast created us third in the rank of our elementary 
empire. There our continual occupation is to praise thee 
and adore thy good pleasure; there we burn unceasingly 
in our aspiration to possess thee. Father, mother, most 
tender of all mothers, admirable archetype of chaste love 
and maternity! Son, flower of sons ! Form of all forms, 
soul, spirit, harmony, and number of all things ! Amen. 


The earth is exorcized by the sprinkling of water, by 


M 


i 7 8 


THE MYSTERIES OR MAGIC 


breathing, and by fire, with the perfumes proper to each 
day, and the prayer of the gnomes. 

The Prayer of the Gnomes. 

Invisible King, who taking the earth as a foundation hast 
hollowed its depths to replenish them with thine omnipo¬ 
tence ! Thou, whose name shaketh the pillars of heaven, 
thou, who causest the seven metals to circulate in the veins 
of the earth, monarch of the seven lights, recompenser of the 
subterranean workers, lead us into the desirable light, into the 
realm of splendour! We watch and we labour unceasingly, 
we seek and we hope, by the twelve stones of the Holy City, 
by the buried talismans, by the pole of loadstone which passes 
through the world’s centre. Saviour, Saviour, Saviour, have 
pity on those who suffer, enlarge our hearts, detach our minds, 
elevate them, ennoble us ! O stability and motion ! O day 
clothed with night! Master, who never dost retain the wages 
of thy workers ! O silvered whiteness ! O golden splendour ! 
O crown of living and melodious diamonds ! Thou, who 
wearest the heavens on thy finger as a sapphire ring, thou, 
who concealest beneath the earth, in the stone kingdom, the 
miraculous seed of stars, live, reign, be ever the dispenser of 
that wealth whereof thou hast made us the custodians ! 


It must be borne in mind that the special kingdom of the 
gnomes is at the North, that of the salamanders at the South, 
that of the sylphs at the East, and that of the undines at the 
West. They influence the four temperaments of man, that is, 
the gnomes influence the melancholic, salamanders the san¬ 
guine, undines the phlegmatic, and sylphs the bilious. Their 
signs are—the hieroglyphic of the bull for the gnomes, who 
are commanded with the sword; of the lion for the sala¬ 
manders, who are commanded with the bifurcated rod, or 
magical trident; of the eagle for the sylphs, who are ruled by 
holy pantacles; and finally, of the aquarius for the undines, 
who are evoked by the cup of libations. Their respective 
sovereigns are Gob for the gnomes, Djin for the salamanders, 
raid a for the sylphs, and Nicksa for the undines. 



CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


T 79 


When an elementary spirit torments, or, at any rate, troubles 
the inhabitants of this world, it must be adjured by air, water, 
fire, and earth, with breathing, sprinkling, burning of perfumes’, 
and by tracing on the ground the star of Solomon and sacred 
Pentagram. These figures should be absolutely correct, and 
drawn either with the ash of consecrated fire, or with a reed 
soaked in various colours, mixed with pulverized loadstone. 
Then, holding the pantacle of Solomon in the hand, and 
taking up by turns the sword, rod, and cup, the Conjuration 
of the Four should be repeated in the following terms :— 

Caput mortuum, imperet tibi Dominus per vivum et 
devotum serpentem. Cherub, imperet tibi Dominus per 
Adam Jotchavah ! Aquila errans, imperet tibi Dominus per 
alas Tauri. Serpens, imperet tibi Tetragrammaton per 
Angelum et Leonem! Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Anael! 
Flu at Udor per spiritum Eloim. Maneat Terra per 
Adam Jot-chavah. Fiat Firmamentum per Jahuvehu- 
Zebaoth. Fiat Judicium per ignem in virtute Michael. 

Angel with the blind eyes, obey or pass away with this holy 
water. Labour, winged bull, or return to earth if thou wouldst 
not be pricked with this sword. Fettered eagle, obey this sign, 
or retire before my breath. Writhing serpent, crawl at my feet, 
or be tortured by the sacred fire and evaporate with the per¬ 
fumes I am burning. Water, revert to water; fire, burn; air, 
circulate; earth, return to earth by the power of the Pentagram, 
which is the morning star, and in the name of the Tetragram, 
which is written in the centre of the cross of light! Amen. 

The sign of the Cross adopted by Christians does not 
exclusively belong to them. It is also Kabbalistic, and 
represents the oppositions and tetradic equilibrium of the 
elements. There were originally two methods of making it, 
the one reserved for priests and initiates, the other set apart 
for the neophytes and profane. Thus, for example, the 
initiate, raising his hand to his forehead, said: “Thine is,” 
then brought down his hand to his breast, “the kingdom,” 
then transferred it to the left shoulder, “justice,” finally to 
the right shoulder, “ and mercy ”; then joining his hands, he 
added, “ through the generating ages.” Tibi sunt Malchut 
et Geburah et Chesed per aeonas—a sign of the Cross which 
is absolutely and splendidly Kabbalistic, but the profanations 


i8o 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


of the Gnosis have entirely lost it to the official and militant 
church. This sign made in this manner should precede and 
terminate the Conjuration of the Four. 

To conquer and subjugate the elementary spirits, we must 
never be guilty of the faults which are their characteristics. 
Never will a capricious and changeable mind be able to rule 
the sylphs. Never will a soft, cold, and fickle disposition be 
able to govern the undines; anger irritates the salamanders, 
and gross covetousness makes those whom it enslaves the 
sport and plaything of the gnomes. But we must be prompt 
and active, like the sylphs; pliant and observant as the un¬ 
dines ; energetic and strong, like the salamanders; laborious 
and patient, like the gnomes; in a word, we must overcome 
them in their strength without ever being overcome by their 
weakness. When he is permanently established in this dis¬ 
position, the whole world will be at the command of the 
enlightened thaumaturge. He will pass through the storm, 
and no rain will fall on his head; the wind will not displace a 
single fold of his garments; he will go through fire and not be 
burned, he will walk on the water, and will discern diamonds 
through the opacity of the earth. These promises, which 
may seem hyperbolic, are so only to the vulgar mind; for if 
the initiate do not materially and literally perform what is 
expressed by these words, he will accomplish things which 
are far greater and far more admirable. 

Why, for example, if it be an established fact that persons 
in the ecstatic state temporarily lose their gravity, should it 
be impossible to walk or glide on the water? The con- 
vulsionaries of St Medard felt neither fire nor steel, and 
begged for the most violent and incredible tortures as a 
relief. The extraordinary ascensions and amazing equili¬ 
brium of certain somnambulists are a revelation of Nature’s 
secret forces. But we live in a century wherein no one has 
the boldness to acknowledge the miracles they have wit¬ 
nessed; and if any one should declare that he has beheld, 
or performed himself, what he narrates, he will be told that 
he is joking at the expense of his hearers, or that he is ill. 
It is far better to be silent and to act. 

The metals which correspond to the four elementary forms 
are gold and silver for air, mercury for water, iron and copper 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


181 


for fire, and lead for earth. Talismans are composed of these 
relatively to the forces they represent, and to the effects it is 
proposed to produce by their means. Divination by the four 
elementary forms, called aeromancy, hydromancy, pyromancy, 
and geomancy, is performed in various ways, all of which 
depend on the will and the translucid, or imagination, of the 
operator. In fact, the four elements are merely instruments 
to assist second sight, which is the faculty of seeing into 
the Astral Light, and is natural as the first, or sensible and 
ordinary sight, though it can operate only by means of the 
abstraction of the senses. Somnambulists and ecstatics are 
naturally gifted with second sight, but this vision is more 
lucid when the abstraction is more complete. Abstraction is 
produced by astral intoxication, that is, by a superabun¬ 
dance of light, which completely saturates and consequently 
deadens the nervous instrument. Sanguine temperaments 
are more disposed to aeromancy, the choleric to pyromancy, 
the phlegmatic to hydromancy, and the hypochondriac to 
geomancy. Aeromancy is confirmed by oneiromancy, or 
divination by dreams, pyromancy is supplemented by 
magnetism, hydromancy by crystallomancy, and geomancy 
by cartomancy. These are transpositions and improvements 
of methods. But divination, in whatsoever manner it be 
performed, is dangerous, or at least, useless, for it weakens 
will-power, consequently impedes liberty, and fatigues the 
nervous system. 


II.—Necromancy. 

The Abbe Trithemius, 1 who in magic was the master of 
Agrippa, explains in his “ Stenography ” the secret of con¬ 
jurations and evocations in an exceedingly natural and 
philosophical manner. To evoke a spirit, he says, is to 
enter into the ruling idea of that spirit, and if we rise 
morally higher in the same line, we shall draw that spirit 
after us and it will serve us. To conjure is to oppose to 
an isolated spirit the resistance of a current and of a chain 
—cum jurare , that is, to make a collective act of faith. The 
greater the power and enthusiasm of this faith, the more 

1 See Note 25. 


182 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


efficacious is the conjuration. We may be alone to evoke a 
spirit, but to conjure it we must speak in the name of a circle 
or association, and it is this which is represented by the 
hieroglyphic circle traced round the Magus while he is 
operating, which also he cannot leave without at the same 
moment losing all his power. 

In virtue of the great magical dogma of the hierarchy 
and of universal analogy, the possibility of real evocations 
may be Kabbalistically demonstrated ; as to the phenomenal 
reality of the result of magical operations conscientiously 
accomplished, it is a question of experience; in our own 
case we have established it, and we place it in the power 
of our readers to renew and confirm our experiences. 

There are evocations of intelligence, evocations of love, and 
evocations of hatred. There are two kinds of necromancy— 
the necromancy of light and the necromancy of darkness, 
evocation by prayer, pantacle, and perfumes, and evocation by 
blood, imprecations, and sacrileges. We have practised the 
first only, and we advise no one to devote themselves to the 
second. It is certain that the images of the departed appear 
to the magnetized persons who evoke them; it is equally 
certain that they never unveil to them any mysteries of the life 
beyond. They are beheld just as they would still be in the 
memory of persons who have known them. When the evoked 
spectres reply to those who address them, it is always by signs, 
or by an interior and imaginary impression, never with a voice 
which really strikes on the ears, and this is easily compre¬ 
hensible—how should a shadow speak ? With what instru¬ 
ment could it make the air vibrate, by impinging on itjn such 
a manner as to cause distinguishable sounds ? 

Electric touches on the part of the apparitions are never¬ 
theless experienced, and these contacts sometimes seem to 
be produced by the hands of the phantom ; this phenomenon 
however is wholly subjective, and the power of imagination, 
acting in concert with the occult force which we call the 
Astral Light, is its sole and only cause. This is proved by 
the fact that the spirits, or at least the spectres which pretend 
to be such, touch us certainly sometimes, but we never can 
touch them, which is one of the most alarming adjuncts of 
apparitions, for the visions seem occasionally so real that we 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 183 

cannot without agitation feel the hand pass through what 
appears to be a body and yet encounter no resistance. 

There is no evidence that spirits really leave the superior 
spheres to communicate with us, and the very contrary is 
probable. We evoke the reminiscences contained in the 
Astral Light, which is the common reservoir of universal 
magnetism. It is in this light that the Emperor Julian beheld 
the manifestation of his gods, but old, ill, and decrepit—fresh 
proof of the influence of current and accredited opinions on 
the reflections of this same magic agent which causes tables to 
speak and answers by taps on the walls. 

We read in ecclesiastical historians that Spiridion, bishop of 
Tremithante, subsequently invoked as a saint, called up the 
spirit of Irene, his daughter, to ascertain from her where a 
deposit of money, which she had received from a traveller, had 
been concealed. Swedenborg habitually communicated with 
the pretended dead, whose forms appeared to him in the Astral 
Light. We have known several credible persons who have 
assured us that they beheld for years the departed who were 
dear to them. The well-known atheist, Sylvanus Marechal, 
appeared to his widow and to a friend, to inform them of a 
sum of 1500 francs in gold which he had hidden in a secret 
drawer of his desk. We have received the anecdote from an 
old friend of the family. 

There should be always an adequate motive and lawful 
object in evocations; otherwise they are works of darkness and 
folly, most dangerous to health and reason. To evoke out of 
pure curiosity, and simply to know if we shall see anything, is 
to be disposed beforehand for fruitless fatigue. The supreme 
sciences tolerate neither doubt nor puerilities. The laudable 
motive in an evocation can be either love or intelligence. 
Evocations of love need less apparatus and are in every way 
more easy. The method of procedure is as follows :— 

We must first carefully collect all the memories of him or 
her whom we seek to behold again, and the articles he or she 
made use of, which hence preserve their impress ; then we 
must either furnish a room where the person dwelt in life, or 
a similar place, where their portrait must be hung with white 
and surrounded by the flowers which they loved; the latter 
should be daily renewed. We must then fix on a definite day, 


184 


THE MYSTERIES GF MAGIC 


either that of their birth, or the one which was most propitious 
for their and our affection, a day of which we suppose that the 
soul, however blessed it may be elsewhere, cannot lose the 
remembrance, and this must be selected for the evocation, for 
which we must prepare ourselves during a space of fourteen 
days. During this period we must be careful to give no one 
the same proof of affection which the deceased had a right to 
expect from us; we must observe rigorous chastity, live in 
retirement, and make only a simple and slight collation daily. 
Every evening at the same hour we must shut ourselves in the 
chamber consecrated to the memory of the lamented person, 
with only a dim light, such as a small funereal lamp or taper 
would afford, and, placing this light behind us, we must 
unveil the portrait, before which we must remain an hour in 
silence, then perfume the chamber with a little good incense, 
and go out backwards. 

On the day fixed for the evocation, we must array ourselves 
before morning as if for a festival, give no one the first greet¬ 
ing, take only one meal, consisting of bread, wine, and roots 
or fruits; the cloth should be white, two covers should be laid, 
and one portion of the bread, which should be served whole, 
must be broken; some drops of wine must also be placed in 
the person’s glass whom we desire to evoke. This repast 
should be made in silence in the chamber of evocations, and 
in presence of the veiled portrait; all that was used at the 
meal must be then cleared away, except the glass of the dead 
person and his share of the bread, which must be left before 
the portrait. In the evening, at the time of the ordinary visit, 
we must repair to the chamber in silence, light a clear fire of 
cypress wood, and seven times cast incense therein, pronounc¬ 
ing the name of the person we desire to behold; the lamp 
must be afterwards extinguished and the fire suffered to go 
out. This day the portrait must not be uncovered. When 
the flame is extinguished, more incense must be placed on the 
ashes, and God must be evoked according to the formulae of 
that religion which the deceased person professed, and accord¬ 
ing to the notion they entertained themselves of God. In 
reciting this prayer, we must identify ourselves with the evoked 
person, speak as they would speak, in a way, believe as they 
believed ; then, after a silence of fifteen minutes, speak to them 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


185 


as if they were present, with faith and affection, praying them 
to manifest to us. Renew this prayer mentally, covering the 
face with both hands; then call on the individual thrice with 
a loud voice; wait, kneeling with closed or covered eyes, for 
some minutes, while mentally communing with them. Then 
call on them three times more in a gentle and affectionate 
tone, and slowly open the eyes. If we behold nothing, the 
experience must be renewed the year following, and up to the 
third time, on which, at least, it is certain that the desired 
apparition will be obtained, and the longer it has delayed the 
more will it be visible and startling in its reality. 

Evocations of knowledge and intelligence are performed 
with more solemn ceremonies. Should a celebrated person 
be concerned, we must meditate on his life and writings for 
twenty-one days, form an idea of his appearance, countenance, 
and voice, mentally address him and imagine his replies, bear 
about us his portrait, or his name at least, submit to a vege¬ 
table diet for the time indicated, observe a severe fast during 
the last seven days, and then construct the magical oratory 
as we shall describe it. 1 The oratory should be wholly shut 
up, but if we operate in the daytime, we may leave a small 
opening on the side where the sun will be found at the time 
of evocation, placing before this opening a triangular prism, 
and before the prism a crystal globe filled with water. If we 
operate at night, we must so arrange the magic lamp that its 
single ray shall fall on the smoke rising from the altar. 

The object of these preparations is to endow the magical 
agent of the elements with a corporeal appearance, and to 
relieve the tension of imagination, which is not exalted with¬ 
out danger to the absolute illusion of dream. It will be 
readily understood, moreover, that a ray from the sun or from 
a lamp, variously coloured and falling on an unsteady smoke, 
cannot in any way create a perfect image. The brazier of 
sacred fire should be in the centre of the oratory, and the altar 
of perfumes at a little distance from it. The Magus should 
turn to the east for prayer and to the west for evocation; he 
should be alone or else assisted by two persons, who must 
observe rigorous silence; he must wear the magic vestments 

1 See “ Thaumaturgical Experiences of Eliphas Levi,” sec. i. 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


186 

as described in a later section, and a crown of gold or ver¬ 
vain ; he should take a bath before the operation, and all his 
under garments must be of unsullied and absolute cleanliness. 
He must then begin with a prayer suited to the disposition of 
the spirit to be evoked, and one which would be approved by 
it were the person still living. Voltaire, for example, would 
never be evoked by reciting prayers in the style of St Bridget’s. 
For the great men of old the hymns of Cleanthes or Orpheus 
should be repeated, with the oath which concludes the Golden 
Verses of Pythagoras. At our own evocation of Apollonius, 
we used the magical philosophy of Patricius, which contains 
the doctrines of Zoroaster and the works of Hermes 
Trismegistus, as a Ritual. We recited in a loud voice the 
Nuctemeron of Apollonius in Greek, and added the following 
conjuration :—- 

BovXqg 5’ 6 rrccrrip ravrav, xai xa.Qr)yr)rrig o rptCfieyiGrog 'Ep/xrjg. 
'larpryr)? h’ 6 } AGyXrjmog o 'Hpd/crdov. ’Icyvog re xa/ [AW^rjg 
‘zahiv "Offjpis lie wv w rexvov uvrotitfu. <&iXoff6<p/ctg he ’ApveQdcf- 
xevig. II o/vjnxTjg ds rrdXiv 6 ’A (fxXemog, o ’I/JjOvQqg. 

’ O'jrot rd xpiiKroi, puGiv r Ep/xr)g, ruv eptuv erriyvoofioi/rou ypot/x- 
[xarcav ffdvrw, xal hiccxpivovff/, xcii r/va /jbevavroi xareffyoeiv d de 
zai rrpog evepyeo/ug Si ^ruv <p6dvei, cfjXui yaX oCeX/ffxoig yapa^ojciv. 

Mccye/av , 6 ArfoXXojvlog, 6 AcroXXooXog, 6 ArroXXwvlog hihcusxeig 
roD Zopodtirpou rov rLpoj&dfyv, hr! hr) roDro, Qeuv 6epa<reta. 1 

For the evocation of spirits belonging to religions which 
have emanated from Judaism, the Kabbalistic invocation of 
Solomon must be made use of, either in Hebrew or in any 
other language with which the spirit to be evoked was 
familiar. 

Powers of the Kingdom, be under my left foot and in my 
right hand—Glory and Eternity, touch my two shoulders 
and direct me in the paths of Victory—Mercy and Justice, 
equilibrate and be the splendour of my life—Intelligence 
and Wisdom, bestow the crown on me—Spirits of Mal- 
chuth, lead me between the two pillars on which the whole 
edifice of the Temple depends—Angels of Netsah and 

1 This quotation, as it exists in the French text, is made almost unin¬ 
telligible by innumerable typographical mistakes, which in the absence of 
any reference to the original are very difficult to correct in a satisfactory 
manner. 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


i »7 


Hod, establish me on the Cubic Stone of Jesod ! O 
Gedulael ! O Geburael ! O Tiphereth ! Binael, be 
my desire— Ruach Hochmael, be my light—be that which 
thou art and thou wilt be, O Ketheriel ! Ischbn , assist 
me in the name of Saddai ! Cherubim , be my strength in 
the name of Adonai ! Beni-Elohim , be my brethren in the 
name of the Son, and by the virtues of Zebaoth. Eloim , do 
battle for me in the name of Tetragrammaton. Ma/ac/iim, 
protect me in the name of mil'. Seraphim , purify my affec¬ 
tion in the name of Elvoh. Hasmalim , enlighten me with 
the splendours of Eloi and Shechinah. Aralim , act— 
Ophanim , revolve and shine— Hajoth a Kadosh , cry, speak, 
shout — Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh — Saddai, Adonai, 
Jotchavah, Eieazereie ! Hallelu-jah, hallelu-jah, hallelu-jah! 
Amen. JDK. 

It must be remembered, above all, that the names Satan, 
Beelzebub, Adramelek, and others which occur in the con¬ 
jurations, do not designate spiritual individuals, but legions 
of impure spirits. “Our name is legion,” says the spirit of 
darkness in the Gospel, “ because we are many.” In hell, or 
the kingdom of anarchy, the majority is the law, and pro¬ 
gression is accomplished in an inverted sense, that is, the 
most advanced in Satanic development, the most degraded 
consequently, are the weakest and most unintelligent. Thus, 
a fatal law forces the demons downward when they wish and 
believe themselves to be rising, and those who call themselves 
chief are the most impotent and despised of all. As to the 
mob of the perverse it trembles before an unknown, invisible, 
capricious, implacable prince, who never explains his laws, 
whose arm is always raised to strike those who cannot under¬ 
stand him. They give this phantom the names of Baal, 
Jupiter, and others far more venerable, which cannot be 
uttered without profanation in hell, but this phantom is only 
the shadow and remembrance of God, disfigured by wilful 
perversity, and remaining in their imagination as a visitation 
of justice and a reproach of truth. 

When the evoked spirit of light appears with a doleful or 
irritated countenance, we must offer it a moral sacrifice, that 
is, be interiorly willing to refrain from what offends it; then 
before leaving the oratory, we must dismiss it by saying:— 


88 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


“ May peace be with thee! I have not wished to trouble 
thee; I shall endeavour to correct myself in whatever offends 
thee; I do and will pray both with thee and for thee: pray 
then for me and with me, and return to thy long sleep, await¬ 
ing that day when we shall wake together. Silence and 
farewell! ” 

We must not end this chapter without adding, for the 
benefit of the curious, some details of the ceremonies of 
black necromancy. We find in several ancient authors how 
it was practised by the sorcerers of Thessaly. A pit was 
dug, on the brink of which a black sheep was killed; then 
the psyllae and larvae supposed to be present and hastening 
to drink the blood were driven away by the Magic Sword. 
The triple Hecate and the infernal gods were called on, and 
thrice the shadow they desired to see was invoked. 

In the Middle Ages, the necromancers profaned tombs 
and compounded philtres and ointments with the grease 
and blood of corpses; they mixed aconite, belladonna, and 
poisonous fungi therewith; then they boiled and skimmed 
these frightful combinations over fires composed of human 
remains and crucifixes stolen from churches; they added 
the dust of dried toads and the ashes of consecrated hosts; 
then they rubbed their foreheads, hands, and stomachs, with 
the infernal ointment, drew the Satanic pantacle, and evoked 
the dead beneath gibbets or in desecrated cemeteries. Their 
howlings were heard at great distances, and the belated 
traveller fancied that legions of phantoms were issuing from 
the earth; the very trees assumed in his eyes affrighting 
shapes, flaming orbs seemed glaring in the thickets, while 
the frogs of the marshes appeared to repeat hoarsely the 
words of the Sabbath. It was the mesmerism of hallucina¬ 
tion, and the contagion of madness. 

The end of the proceedings of black magic is to disturb 
reason and produce all those feverish excitements which 
supply courage for the commission of great crimes. The 
grimoires, which were formerly seized by authority and 
burned whenever they were met with, are certainly anything 
but harmless books. Sacrilege, murder, and theft are in¬ 
dicated or hinted at as means to realization in nearly all 
these operations. Thus in the Great Grimoire and in the 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


189 

Red Dragon, a later imitation of the Great Grimoire, we 
find necromantic proceedings which consist in tearing up 
the earth over tombs with the nails, dragging out the bones 
beneath, setting them crosswise on the breast, and, thus 
arrayed, assisting at the midnight mass on Christmas Eve 
in a church, where at the moment of the elevation we 
must rise and rush out, shouting—“ Let the dead rise from 
their tombs ! ” Then we must go back to the cemetery, take 
up a handful of the earth which lies nearest to the coffin, 
return at a run to the church which has been startled by 
the previous outcry, set down the two bones still crosswise 
and again shout—“ Let the dead rise from their tombs ! ” 
When, if no one be found to arrest us and take us to the 
madhouse, we may retire at a slow pace, counting four 
thousand five hundred steps without turning aside, which 
supposes us to be either on a high road or capable of 
scaling walls. At the end of these paces we must lie down 
on the ground as if in a coffin, having previously strewn 
cross-wise the earth in our hand, after which we must once 
again repeat, this time in a lugubrious tone, the words, 
“ Let the dead rise from their tombs ! ” and then call thrice 
on the person desired to appear. It is not to be disputed 
that anyone sufficiently idiotic and perverse as to abandon 
themselves to such practices must be disposed before-hand 
for all chimseras and phantoms. The recipe in the Great 
Grimoire is therefore certainly most efficacious, but we advise 
none of our readers to make use of it. 

III. —Mysteries of the Pentagram and other 
Pantacles . 1 

The Pentagram expresses the mind’s domination over the 
elements and it is by this sign that we bind the demons 
of the air, the spirits of fire, the spectres of water, and the 
ghosts of earth. It is the Star of the Magi, the burning 
star of the Gnostic schools, the sign of intellectual omnipo¬ 
tence and autocracy. It is the symbol of the Word made 
Flesh, and, according to the direction of its rays, it repre- 

1 See Note 26 . 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


190 

sents good or evil, order or disorder, the sacred lamb of 
Ormuz and St John, or the accursed goat of Mendes. It is 
initiation or profanation, Lucifer or Vesper, Mary or Lilith, 
victory or death, light or darkness. 

The Pentagram with two horns in the ascendant, repre¬ 
sents Satan, or the goat of the Sabbath, and with the single 
horn in the ascendant it is the sign of the Saviour. It is the 
figure of the human body with the four members and a point 
representing the head; a human figure head downward natur¬ 



ally represents the demon, that is, intellectual subversion, 
disorder and folly. 

Now, if magic be a reality ; if this secret science be the true 
law of the three worlds; this absolute sign, this sign as old 
as and older than history, should and must actually exercise 
an incalculable influence on souls disengaged from their 
material envelope. Armed therewith and suitably disposed, 
we can behold infinity through the medium of that faculty 
which is as the Soul’s Eye, and can cause ourselves to be 
served by legions of angels and by demon hordes. The 
empire of the will over the Astral Light, which is the physical 





CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


191 


soul of the four elements, is represented in magic by the 
Pentagram. That which was used by the author in his 
evocation at London, scientifically perfected, is that which is 
engraved at the beginning of this chapter, and it is not to be 
found so complete either in the clavicles of Solomon or in 
the magic calendars of Tycho-Brahe and Duchenteau. If it 
be asked how a sign can exercise that immense power over 
spirits which is claimed for the Pentagram, we inquire in turn 
why the Christian world bows before the sign of the Cross. 
The sign by itself is nothing; it derives strength from the 
doctrine it resumes, and of which it is the Logos. Now, a 
sign which epitomizes by expression all the occult forces of 
Nature, which has always manifested to elementary and other 
spirits a power superior to their own, naturally strikes them 
with fear and respect, and enforces their obedience by the 
empire of knowledge and will over ignorance and weakness. 

The sign of the Pentagram is called also the sign of the 
Microcosm, and it represents what the Kabbalists of the 
Zohar term the Microprosopus. Its complete comprehension 
is the key of the two worlds—it is absolute natural philosophy 
and natural science. Its use, however, is most dangerous to 
operators who do not completely and perfectly understand it. 
It should be composed of seven metals, or at any rate be 
graved in pure gold on white marble, but it may be also 
designed in vermilion on a lambskin free from every defect 
and stain, this being the symbol of integrity and light. The 
marble should be virgin, that is, should never have been 
previously used; the lambskin should be prepared under the 
auspices of the sun. The lamb should have been killed in 
Paschal time with a new knife, and the skin must have been 
salted with salt consecrated by magical ceremonies. Negli¬ 
gence in even one of these difficult and, at first sight, arbitrary 
observances completely stultifies the great operations of 
science. The Pentagram is consecrated with the four ele¬ 
ments ; the magic figure is breathed on five times, it is 
sprinkled with consecrated water, and dried by the smoke 
of five perfumes, namely, incense, myrrh, aloes, sulphur, and 
camphor, with which a little white resin and ambergris may 
be mixed; then we must breathe five times pronouncing the 
names of the five genii, who are Gabriel, Raphael, Anael, 


192 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Samael, and Oriphiel; the pantacle must be subsequently 
laid on the earth and turned towards the North, South, East, 
and West, and to the centre of the astronomical cross, pro¬ 
nouncing the letters of the sacred Tetragram one after the 
another. Finally, we must repeat softly the blessed names of 
Aleph and the mysterious Thau, united in the kabbalistic 
name of Azoth. 

/ The Pentagram must be placed on the altar of perfumes 
and on the tripod of evocations. The operator must also 
wear one about his person, with the figure of the Macrocosm, 
that is, the six-pointed star, composed of two inter-laced 
triangles. When a spirit of light is to be evoked, the head 
of the first star, that is, one of its points, must be turned 
towards the tripod of evocation, and the two lower points 
towards the altar of perfumes. The reverse is to be done 
where a spirit of darkness is concerned, but, in this case, the 
operator must be careful to hold the end of the rod or the 
point of the sword towards the top of the Pentagram. We 
have said already that signs are the active voice of the will. 
Now the will must produce its voice perfectly in order to 
transform it into action; and a single negligence, representing 
a useless word or a doubt, stamps every operation with false¬ 
hood and inefficacy, and turns back all the vainly expended 
energies on the operator. Magical ceremonial must, there¬ 
fore, be absolutely abstained from, or scrupulously and 
exactly accomplished in everything. The Pentagram graved 
in luminous lines on glass by means of the electrical machine 
also exercises a great influence on spirits and terrifies them. 
It was traced by the old magicians on the threshold of the 
door, to prevent evil spirits from entering and good ones from 
going out. This restraint resulted from the direction of the 
star’s points. Two points on the outside repelled the evil, 
two on the inside detained them captive, one point only on 
the inner side captivated the good spirits. All these magical 
theorems, based on the unique dogma of Hermes, and on 
the analogical inductions of science, have been invariably 
confirmed by the visions of ecstatics and by the convulsions 
of cataleptics under the supposed possession of spirits. The 
G which Freemasons place in the centre of the Burning Star 
signifies Gnosis and Generation, the two sacred words of 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


i 93 


the ancient Kabbalah. It also signifies Grand Architect, 
for the Pentagram, from whatever side it may be looked at, 
always represents an A. By placing it in such a manner 
that two of its points are above and only one below, we may 
see the horns, ears, and beard of the hieratic goat of Mendes, 
when it becomes the sign of infernal evocations. 

The allegorical star of the Magi is nothing else, as we 
have said, than the mysterious Pentagram; and these three 
kings, children of Zoroaster, conducted by the Burning 
Star to the cradle of the microcosmic God, would be suf¬ 
ficient to prove the wholly kabbalistic and truly magical 
origines of Christian doctrine. One of these kings is black, 
another white, the third brown; the white king offers gold, 
symbol of life and light; the black myrrh, image of death 
and darkness; the brown presents incense, emblematic of 
the divinity of the conciliating dogma of the duadic cause; 
then they return into their own country by another road, 
to shew that a new cultus is but a new path which leads 
humanity to the one and only religion, which is that of the 
sacred triad and the shining Pentagram, the sole eternal 
Catholicism. In the Apocalypse, St John beholds this same 
star fall from heaven to earth; it is then called absynth 
or bitterness, and all the waters of the sea become bitter 
—striking image of the materialization of dogma, which 
produces the fanaticism and arid sourness of controversy.* 
It is then to Christianity itself that the words of Isaiah may 
be addressed—“ How art thou fallen from heaven, bright 
star, which wert so splendid in the morning?” ("But the 
Pentagram, profaned though it be by men, shines unclouded 
for ever in the right hand of the Word of truth, and the 
inspired voice promises to whomsoever shall conquer, that 
he shall possess the morning star—a solemn restitution held 
out to the star of Lucifer. 

As will be seen, all mysteries of magic, all symbols of 
the gnosis, all figures of occultism, all kabbalistic keys of 
prophecy, are resumed in the sign of the Pentagram, which 
Paracelsus proclaims to be the greatest and most potent of 
all. It is indeed the sign of the absolute and universal 
synthesis. Must we be astonished after this at the real 
influence exercised by this sign on the intelligences of 

N 


194 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


every hierarchy ? Those who brave the sign of the Cross 
shudder at the aspect of the Star of the Microcosm. The 
Magus, on the contrary, when he feels his will grow weak, 
casts his eyes on that symbol, takes it in his right hand, 
and feels himself to be armed with intellectual omnipotence, 
provided that he is truly a king worthy to be conducted by 
the star to the cradle of divine realization; provided he 
knows, dares, wills, and can hold his peace; provided he 
understands the uses of the pantacle, cup, wand, and sword; 
provided, lastly, that the intrepid glances of his soul corre¬ 
spond to those two eyes which the upper ray of the Pentagram 
always presents to him open. 

The intelligence of the wise man gives value to his pantacle, 
as his knowledge gives weight to his will, and spirits compre¬ 
hending this power are at once subject to the sign when 
intelligently used. Let us briefly explain this marvel. All 
created spirits communicate with each other by means of 
signs, and all adhere to a certain number of truths expressed 
by certain determined forms, the perfection of which increases 
in proportion to the detachment of the spirits, those who are 
not weighted by the chains of matter recognising by the first 
intuition whether a sign is the expression of a true power or 
of an imprudent will. Thus, by the Pentagram, spirits may 
be forced to appear in dream, either during our waking state 
or in sleep, by themselves bringing before our Diaphane their 
own reflection which exists in the Astral Light, if they have 
lived, or a reflection analogous to their spiritual Logos if they 
have not lived on earth. This explains all visions, and, more 
than all, shews why the dead invariably appear to seers either 
as they were on earth, or as they still are in the tomb, but 
never as they exist in that life which escapes the perceptions 
of our present envelope. 

Women with child are more than others under the 
influence of the Astral Light, which concurs in the formation 
of the infant, and unceasingly presents to them the reminis¬ 
cences of the forms with which it is replete. It is thus that 
the most virtuous women sometimes deceive the malice of 
observers by equivocal resemblances ; they frequently impress 
on the fruit of their marriage an image which strikes them in 
a dream, and it is thus that the same physiognomies are 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


T 95 


perpetuated from generation to generation. The Kabbalistic 
*! se P< r nta g ram ma y th en determine the appearance of 
he child to be born, and an initiated woman could impress 
upon her son the features of Nero or Achilles, as much as 
those of Louis XIV. or of Napoleon. 


Solomon's Seal. 


The double triangle of Solomon, forming the six-pointed 
star, is the sign of the Macrocosmos, but it is less powerful 
than the Pentagram, the microcosmic sign. It is represented 
in the following manner :— 



The double triangle of Solomon is explained by St John in a 
remarkable way. He says, “ There are three who give 
testimony in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy 
Ghost . . .; and there are three which give testimony on 
earth, the spirit, the water, and the blood.” St John is thus 
in accordance with the masters of Hermetic philosophy, who 
give to their sulphur the name of ether, to their mercury the 
name of philosophic water, and to their salt the qualification 
of the dragon’s blood, or menstruum of the earth. The 
blood or salt corresponds by opposition with the Father, the 
azotic or mercurial water with the Word or Logos, and the 
breath or spirit with the Holy Ghost—but the things of trans- 









196 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


cendental symbolism cannot be properly understood except 
by the true children of science. 

Independently of these signs, the ancients made use, when 
evoking, of mystical combinations of the Divine names. The 
magic triangle of Pagan theosophists is the celebrated Abra¬ 
cadabra, to which they attributed extraordinary virtues, and 
it was represented thus :— 

ABRACADABRA 
ABRACADABR 
ABRACADAB 
ABRACADA 
A B R A C A D 
A B R A C A 
A B R A C 
A B R A 
A B R 
A B 
A 

This combination of letters is a key of the Pentagram. The 
initial A is repeated five times and reproduced thirty times. 
The isolated A represents the unity of the first cause or of 
the intelligent, active agent. A united to B represents the 
fertilization of the duad by unity. R is the sign of the triad, 
because it represents, hieroglyphically, the effusion resulting 
from the union of the two principles. The number 11 of the 
letters of the word(adds the unity of the initiate to the denary 
of Pythagoras, and the number 66, the total of the added 
letters, forms kabbalistically the number 12, which is the 
square of the triad, 1 and consequently the mystical quadrature 
of the circle. We may remark in passing that the author of 
the Apocalpyse, that clavicle of the Christian Kabbalah, has 
composed the number of the beast, that is, of idolatry, by 
adding a 6 to the double senary of the Abracadabra, which 
gives kabbalistically the number 18, assigned in the Tarot 
to the hierogylphic symbol of the night of the uninitiated, 
the moon with the towers, the dog, wolf, and crab (the 

1 Surely the square of the triad is 9 ! 12 is the triad multiplied by the 
tetrad,—T r, 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


197 


sceptic, the blind believer, and the enemy of progress),—a 
mysterious and obscure number, of which the kabbalistic Key 
is 9, that of initiation. On this subject the sacred Kabbalist 
expressly says: “ He that hath understanding (that is, the 
key of the kabbalistic numbers), let him calculate the number 
of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and the number 
of him is 666. It is, in fact, the decade of Pythagoras multi¬ 
plied by itself and added to the sum of the triangular pantacle 
Abracadabra ; it is therefore the epitome of all the magic 
of the ancient world, the entire programme of human genius, 
which the Divine Genius of the Gospel sought to absorb and 
supplant. 

These hieroglyphical combinations of letters and numbers 
belong to the practical part of the Kabbalah. Such calcula¬ 
tions, which now seem to us arbitrary or dry, formed part of 
oriental philosophical symbolism, and were of the greatest 
importance in the teaching of sacred things emanating from 
the secret sciences. The absolute kabbalistic alphabet, 
which connected primitive ideas with allegories, allegories 
with letters, letters with numbers, was what was then called 
the Keys of Solomon, preserved, though completely mis¬ 
understood, in the game of Tarot, the antique symbols in 
which were noticed and appreciated for the first time, in our 
own days, by the erudite archaeologist, Court de Gebelin. 


IV.— Magical Ceremonial and Consecration of 
Talismans. 

Ceremonies, vestments, perfumes, characters, and figures 
being necessary, as we have said, to employ the imagination 
in the education of the will, the success of magical operations 
depends on the faithful observance of every rite. These rites 
have nothing fantastic or arbitrary about them; they have 
been transmitted to us from antiquity, and subsist always by 
the essential laws of analogical realization and the correspond¬ 
ence which necessarily exists between ideas and forms. 
After passing several years in consulting and comparing all 
the most authentic grimoires and magical rituals, we have 
been enabled, not without trouble, to reconstruct the cere- 


198 


THE MYSTERIES OE MAGIC 


monial of universal and primitive magic. The only serious 
books that we have seen on this subject are manuscripts 
written in conventional characters, which we have deciphered 
by the help of the polygraphy of Trithemius. The value of 
others is wholly contained in hieroglyphics or in the symbols 
with which they are adorned, and they disguise the truth of 
their images by the superstitious fictions of a mystifying 
text. Such, for example, is the Enchiridion of Pope Leo 
III., 1 which has never been printed with its true figures, 
and has been recovered by us for our private use from an 
ancient manuscript. 

The Rituals known under the name of the Claviculae of 
Solomon are very numerous. Many have been printed, 
while others remain in manuscript; a beautiful copy in 
extremely graceful caligraphy is preserved at the Biblio- 
theque Imperiale; it is enriched with pantacles and 
characters which are, for the most part, to be found in 
the magical calendars of Tycho-Brahe and Duchentau. 
There are, lastly, printed Claviculae and Grimoires which 
are disgraceful speculations and mystifications of low publish¬ 
ing houses. The book so well known and so much decried 
by our fathers, under the name of Petit Albert , belongs for 
the most part to this class; its only serious sections are 
some calculations borrowed from Paracelsus and some 
talismanic figures. 

In questions of realization and ritual, Paracelsus is an 
imposing magical authority. No one has accomplished 
greater works than his, and for this very reason he has 
concealed the power of ceremonial, and teaches only in his 
occult philosophy the existence of the magnetic agent of 
the omnipotence of will-force; he epitomizes the whole 
science of characters in two signs, which are the macro- 
cosmic and microcosmic stars. This was sufficient for adepts, 
and it was of importance that the crowd should remain 
uninitiated. Paracelsus, therefore, did not teach the Ritual, 
but he practised, and his practice was a sequence of miracles. 

The triad and tetrad are of great importance in magic. 
Their union composes the great religious and kabbalistic 


1 See Note 27 . 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


199 


number which represents the universal synthesis. The world, 
in the belief of the ancients, was governed by seven secondary 
causes, called by Trithemius secundcci , and these universal 
forces are designated by Moses under the plural name of 
Eloim , the gods. These forces, analogous yet contrary one 
to another, produce equilibrium by their contrasts, and 
regulate the revolution of the spheres. The Jews called them 
the seven great archangels, and gave them the names of 
Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Anael, Samael, Zadkiel, and 
Oriphiel. The four last were called by the Gnostic Chris¬ 
tians Uriel, Barachiel, Scaltiel, and Jehudiel. Other nations 
have attributed to these spirits the government of the seven 
chief planets, and have given them the names of their great 
divinities. All have believed in their relative influence; 
astronomy has divided the ancient sky among them, and has 
attributed to them successively the government of the seven 
days of the week. This is the reason of the diverse cere¬ 
monies of the magic week and of the septenary cultus of the 
planets. We have said already that here the planets are 
signs and nothing more; they possess the influence which 
universal faith attributes to them because they are more truly 
the stars of the human mind than the stars of the sky. 

The sun, which olden magic always regarded as fixed, is 
only a planet for the ignorant; so does it represent in the 
week the day of repose which we call, like the ancients, the 
day of the sun. The seven magical planets, that is, the seven 
strings of the human lyre, correspond to the seven colours of 
the prism and the seven notes of the musical octave; they 
also represent the seven virtues, and, by opposition, the seven 
vices of Christian morality. Thus faith, that aspiration 
towards the infinite, that noble self-confidence, sustained by 
the belief in all virtues, faith which in feeble natures may 
degenerate into pride, was represented by the Sun; hope, 
enemy to avarice, by the Moon; charity, opposed to luxury, 
by Venus, the brilliant star of the morning and evening; 
strength, superior to anger, by Mars; prudence, in opposition 
to idleness, by Mercury; temperance, opposed to gluttony, by 
Saturn, to whom a stone was given in place of his children ; 
and, finally, justice, in opposition to envy, was represented by 
Jupiter, the conqueror of the Titans. Such are the symbols 


200 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


borrowed by astrology from the Hellenic cultus. In the 
Jewish Kabbalah, the Sun represents the angel of light; 
the Moon, the angel of aspirations and dreams ; Mars, the 
exterminating angel; Venus, the angel of love; Mercury, the 
angel of culture ; J upiter, the angel of power ; Saturn, the 
angel of the solitudes. These governing powers of souls 
divide the human life into periods among themselves, and 
astrologers compute these periods from the revolutions of 
corresponding planets. 

The spiritual sky has never changed, and astrology has 
been more invariable than astronomy. The seven planets 
are really nothing else but the hieroglyphic symbols of the 
keyboard of our affections. To compose talismans of the 
Sun, Moon, or Saturn is to attach one’s will magnetically to 
signs which correspond to the principal energies of the soul; 
to consecrate anything to Mercury or Venus is to magnetize 
that thing with a direct intention either of pleasure or of 
knowledge or profit. Metals, animals, plants, and their 
analogous perfumes, are here our auxiliaries. The seven 
magical animals are—among birds, corresponding to the 
divine world, the swan, the owl, the vulture, the stork, the 
eagle, and the pewit; among fishes, corresponding to the 
spiritual or scientific world, the seal, the celurus, the lucius, 
the thimallus, the dolphin, and the cuttle-fish; among quad¬ 
rupeds, corresponding to the natural world, the lion, the cat, 
the wolf, the goat, the ape, the stag, and the mole. The 
blood, fat, liver, and gall of these animals are used in 
enchantments ; their brains combine with the perfumes of the 
planets, and it was recognised by the practice of the ancients 
that they possessed magnetic virtues corresponding to the 
seven planetary influences. 

The seven sacraments are equally in correspondence with 
the great universal septenary. Baptism, which consecrates 
the element of water, corresponds to the moon; severe 
Penitence is under the auspices of Samael, the angel of Mars ; 
Confirmation, which gives the spirit of understanding, and 
imparts to the true believer the gift of tongues, is under the 
providence of Raphael, the angel of Mercury; the Eucharist 
substitutes the sacramental realization of God made man in 
place of the empire of Jupiter; Matrimony is consecrated to 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


201 


the angel Anael, the purifying genius of Venus ; Extreme 
Unction is the safeguard of the sick on the point of falling 
beneath the scythe of Saturn; and Holy Orders, which 
consecrate the priesthood of Light, is more specially marked 
by the characters of the Sun. Almost all these analogies 
were remarked by the erudite Dupuis, who thence concluded 
that every religion is false, instead of discovering the sanctity 
and perpetuity of a single dogma, ever reproduced in the 
universal symbolism of successive religious observances. He 
did not comprehend the permanent revelation transmitted to 
the mind of man by nature’s harmonies, and has beheld only 
a succession of errors in the sequence of ingenious images 
and everlasting truths. 

Magical works are also seven in number—i. Works of 
light and wealth, under the patronage of the Sun. 2. Works 
of divination and mysteries, under the invocation of the 
Moon. 3. Works of skill, science, and eloquence, under 
the protection of Mercury. 4. Works of wrath and chastise¬ 
ment, consecrated to Mars. 5. Works of love, favoured by 
Venus. 6. Works of ambition and policy, under the aus¬ 
pices of Jupiter. 7. Works of malediction and death, under 
the care of Saturn. In theological symbolism the Sun 
represents the Word of Truth; the Moon, religion itself; 
Mars, justice; Mercury, the interpretation and knowledge of 
mysteries; Venus, mercy and love; Jupiter, the risen and 
glorified Saviour; Saturn, God the Father, or the Jehovah of 
Moses. In the human body, the Sun is analogous to the 
heart, the Moon to the brain, Jupiter to the right hand, 
Saturn to the left, Mars to the left foot, Venus to the right, 
Mercury to the parts of generation, which has sometimes 
caused the genius of this planet to be represented by an 
androgynous figure. In the human face, the Sun rules the 
forehead, Jupiter the right eye, Saturn the left; the Moon 
reigns between the two eyes at the root of the nose, of which 
the two nostrils are governed by Mars and Venus. Lastly, 
Mercury exercises his influence over mouth and chin. These 
notions of the ancients formed their occult science of phy¬ 
siognomy, since imperfectly recovered by Lavater. 

The Magus who seeks to proceed to the operations of 
Light, should work on a Sunday from midnight to eight in 


202 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


the morning, or from three in the afternoon to ten in the 
evening. He must be vested in a purple robe, with a tiara 
and bracelets of gold. The altar of perfumes and the 
tripod of sacred fire must be surrounded by garlands of 
laurel, heliotrope, and sunflowers; the perfumes must be 
cinnamon, strong incense, saffron, and red sandal-wood; the 
ring must be of gold, with a chrysolith or ruby, the carpets 
of lion-skin, the screens of hawk’s feathers. 

On Monday he should wear a white robe, embroidered 
with silver, with a triple necklace of pearls, crystals, and 
selenite; the tiara should be covered with yellow silk, and 
embroidered with silver characters forming in Hebrew the 
monogram of Gabriel, as it is found in the secret philosophy 
of Agrippa; the perfumes should be white sandal-wood, 
camphor, amber, aloes, and the ground seed of cucumber; 
the garlands should be of mugwort, moonwort, and yellow 
ranunculuses. Tapestries, garments, and objects of a black 
colour should be avoided, and no metal but silver should be 
worn. 

On Tuesday, a day for the works of vengeance, the robe 
should be flame-coloured, or of the colour of rust, or blood, 
with belt and bracelets of steel; the rod should not be used, 
but merely the magic dagger and sword. The garlands 
should be of absynth and rue, and a steel ring with an 
amethyst for its stone should be worn on the finger. 

On Wednesday, a day favourable to supreme science, the 
robe should be green, or of a stuff shot with various colours; 
the necklace should be of pearls in hollow glass beads, con¬ 
taining mercury; the perfumes should be benzoin, mace, 
and storax; the flowers, the narcissus, lily, mercury, fumitory, 
and marjoram; the precious stone should be agate. 

On Thursday, the day for great religious and political 
achievements, the robe must be scarlet, and on the forehead 
should be a brass tablet having the character of the spirit 
of Jupiter, and these words —Giarar, Bethor, Samgabiel ; 
the perfumes must be incense, ambergris, balm, grain of 
paradise, macis, and saffron ; the ring must be ornamented 
with an emerald or sapphire; the garlands and crowns must 
be of oak, poplar, fig, and pomegranate. 

On Friday, the day for amorous operations, the vestment 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


203 


should be of azure blue, the hangings green and rose colour, 
the ornaments of polished copper, the crowns of violets, the 
garlands of roses, myrtle, and olive leaves; the ring should 
be ornamented with a torquoise; lapis-lazuli and beryl will 
answer for tiara and bracelets; the screens must be of swan’s 
feathers, and the operator must wear on his breast a copper 
talisman with the character of Anael and these words Aveeva 
Vadelilith. 

On Saturday, a day of funereal operations, the vestment 
should be black or brown, with characters embroidered in 
orange-coloured silk; round the neck must be worn a leaden 
medal having the character of Saturn, and these words— 
Almalec, Aphiel, Zarahiel ; the perfumes should be 
diagridium, scammony, alum, sulphur, and assafcetida; the 
ring should be enriched by an onyx; the garlands should 
be of ash, cypress, and black hellebore; on the onyx of 
the ring, during the hours of Saturn, should be engraved 
the double head of Janus by means of the consecrated awl. 

Such are the antique magnificences of the secret cultus 
of the Magi. With similar ceremonies the great magicians 
of the middle ages proceeded to the daily consecration of 
pantacles and talismans relating to the seven genii. A 
pantacle is a synthetic character resuming the whole magical 
dogma in one of its special phases. It is thus the real ex¬ 
pression of a completed thought and act of will; it is the 
signature of a mind. The ceremonial consecration of this 
sign attaches the intention of the operator still more strongly 
thereto, and establishes between himself and the pantacle a 
veritable magnetic chain. Pantacles may be indifferently 
traced on virgin parchment, paper, or metals. A talisman 
is a piece of metal which bears either pantacles or characters, 
and has received a special consecration for a defined intention. 
Gaffarel, in his learned work on the antiquities of magic, 
has scientifically demonstrated the real power of talismans, 
and the faith in their virtue is otherwise so great in nature 
that we gladly bear about us the keepsakes of those we love, 
persuaded that such relics will preserve us from danger and 
ensure our happiness. Talismans may be made either of the 
seven kabbalistic metals—gold, silver, iron, copper, fixed 
mercury, brass, and lead—or of precious stones, such as 


204 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


carbuncles, crystals, diamonds, emeralds, agates, sapphires, 
and onyxes. The Pentagram must be always engraved on 
one side of the talisman, with a circle for the Sun, a crescent 
for the Moon, a winged caduceus for Mercury, a sword for 
Mars, a G for Venus, a crown for Jupiter, and a scythe for 
Saturn. The other side of the talisman should bear the sign 
of Solomon, that is, the six-pointed star formed by two inter¬ 
laced triangles ; in the centre there should be placed a human 
figure for the Sun talismans, a cup for those of the Moon, a 
dog’s head for those of Jupiter, a lion’s for those of Mars, a 
dove’s for those of Venus, a bull’s or goat’s for those of 
Saturn. 1 The names of the seven angels should be added 
either in Hebrew, Arabic, or magic characters similar to those 
of the alphabets of Trithemius. The two triangles of Solomon 
may be replaced by the double cross of Ezekiel’s wheels, this 
being found on a great number of ancient pantacles. All 
objects of this nature, whether in metals or in precious stones, 
should be carefully wrapped in silk satchels of a colour 
analogous to the spirit of the planet, perfumed with the 
perfumes of the corresponding day, and preserved from all 
impure looks and touches. Pantacles and talismans of the 
Sun should not be seen or handled by deformed and ugly 
persons, or by immoral women; those of the Moon are 
profaned by the glances and touches of debauched men and 
menstruous women; those of Mercury lose their virtue if seen 
or fingered by paid priests : those of Mars should be concealed 
from cowards; those of Venus from depraved men, and 
from such as are under a vow of celibacy; those of Jupiter 
from the impious ; and those of Saturn from virgins and 
children, not that the looks or contact of these can ever be 
impure, but because the talisman would bring them mis¬ 
fortune, and thus lose all its power. 

Crosses of honour and similar decorations are veritable 
talismans which increase personal importance and worth. 
Their solemn distributions are consecrations. Public opinion 
may invest them with prodigious power. The reciprocal 
influence of signs on ideas and of ideas on signs has not been 
sufficiently noticed. It is equally true that the revolutionary 


1 See Note 28. 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


205 


achievement of modern times has been summed up sym¬ 
bolically in its entirety by the Napoleonic substitution of 
the Star of Honour in place of the Cross of St Louis. It is 
the Pentagram substituted for the labarum ; it is the rehabili¬ 
tation of the symbol of light; it is the typical resurrection of 
Adonhiram. They say that Napoleon believed in his star, 
and could he have been made to state what he understood 
by this star, it would have been found to be his genius. 
He did rightly, therefore, in adopting the Pentagram as his 
sign, for it is the symbol of human sovereignty by intelligent 
initiative. The mighty soldier of the Revolution knew little, 
but he divined almost everything; so was he the instinctive 
and practical magician of modern times. The world is still 
full of his wonders, and the country folk will never believe 
him to be dead. 

Blessed and indulgenced objects, objects touched by holy 
images or by venerable persons, beads from Palestine, the 
Agnus Dei (composed of wax from the Paschal candle, and the 
annual remains of consecrated chrism) scapulars, and medals, 
are real talismans. 

The greater the importance and solemnity brought to bear 
in the confection of talismans and pantacles, the greater is the 
virtue they acquire. Their consecration should be performed 
on the special days we have enumerated, with the apparatus 
described. They are consecrated by the four exorcised 
elements, after conjuring the spirits of darkness by the Con¬ 
juration of the Four. When taking up the pantacle, and 
sprinkling some drops of magic water thereon, we must 
say :— 

In nomine Eloim et per spiritum aquarum viventium, sis 
mihi in signum lucis et sacramentum voluntatis. 

Presenting it to the smoke of the perfumes, 

Per serpentem aneum sub quo cadunt serpentes ignei, sis 
mihi , c i*c. 

Breathing seven times on the pantacle or talisman, 

Per firmame7itum et spiritum vocis , sis mihi, &c. 

Lastly, placing thereupon some grains of purified earth or 
salt, 

In sale terra et per virtutem vitce oeternce, sis mihi, &c. 

Then the Conjuration of the Seven must be made in the 


206 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


following manner:—Throwing alternately on the sacred fire 
one pastille of the seven perfumes, we must say :— 

In the name of Michael, let Jehovah command thee and 
drive thee hence, Chavajoth ! 

In the name of Gabriel, let Adonai command thee and 
drive thee thence, Belial! 

In the name of Raphael, vanish before Elchim, Sachabiel! 

By Samael Zebaoth and in the name of Eloim Gibor, depart 
Adramelek! 

By Zachariel and Sachiel-Meleck, be subject to Elvah, 
Samgabiel! 

In the divine and human name of Schaddai and by the sign 
of the Pentagram which I hold in my right hand, in the name 
of the angel Anael, by the power of Adam and of Heva, who 
are Jotchavah, begone, Lilith ! Let us rest in peace, 
Nahemah ! • 

By the holy Eloi'm and the names of the genii Cashiel, 
Sehaltiel, Aphiel, and Zarahiel, at the mandate of Orifiel, 
withdraw from us, Moloch ! We refuse thee our children to 
devour. 

The chief magic instruments are—the rod, the sword, the 
lamp, the cup, the altar, and the tripod. In the operations of 
supreme and divine magic, the lamp, rod, and cup are used; 
in black magic, the rod is replaced by the sword, and the lamp 
by the candle of Cardan. The magic rod, which must not be 
confused with the simple divining rod, nor with the fork of 
the necromancers, nor with the trident of Paracelsus, the true 
and absolute magic rod, must be a single and perfectly straight 
beam of the almond or hazel tree, cut by a single blow with 
the magic pruning-knife, or golden sickle, before the sun rises, 
and at the moment when the tree is about to blossom. It 
must be longitudinally perforated without splitting or breaking 
it, and a needle of magnetized iron, occupying its whole 
extent, must be introduced; then a polyhedral prism trian¬ 
gularly cut must be fitted to one of its ends, and to the other 
a similar figure of black resin. In the middle of the rod 
must be placed two rings, one of red copper, the other of zinc ; 
the rod must be gilt on the side of the resin, and silvered 
on the side of the prism up to the central rings, and it must 
be wrapped in silk to the extremities exclusively. On the 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


207 


copper ring must be engraved these characters nBnpnD^SFlT, 
and on the zinc one The consecration of the 

rod should last seven days, beginning at the new moon, 
and should be made by an initiate possessing the great 
Arcanum, and himself having a consecrated rod. This is the 
transmission of the magical priesthood, which has never ceased 
since the misty origin of the transcendent science. The rod 
and other instruments, but the rod above all, must be care¬ 
fully hidden, and under no pretext should the magus permit 
it to be seen or touched by the profane; otherwise it will lose 
all its virtue. The manner of transmitting the rod is one of 
the secrets of science which it is never permitted to reveal. 
The length of the magic rod should not exceed that of the 
operator’s arm; the magician should never use it except when 
alone, and should not even handle it unnecessarily. Many 
ancient magi made it only the length of the fore arm, and con¬ 
cealed it beneath their long mantles, shewing the simple 
divining rod only in public, or some allegorical sceptre made 
of ivory and ebony, according to the nature of their opera¬ 
tions. The magic rod is the Vcrendu?n of the magus; he 
should not so much as refer to it in any clear and precise 
way; no one should boast of having it, and the secret of its 
consecration should be transmitted on condition of absolute 
confidence and discretion alone. 

The sword is less occult, and must be made in the follow¬ 
ing manner :—It must be of pure steel with a copper handle 
made in the form of a cross with three pommels, as it is 
represented in the Enchiridion of Leo III., or else with 
two crescents for guard. On the middle knot of the guard, 
which should be covered with a gold plate, the sign of the 
Macrocosm must be engraved on one side, and that of the 
Microcosm on the other. On the pommel must be in¬ 
scribed the Hebrew monogram of Michael, as it is seen in 
Agrippa; the characters rDM miT must be engraved 

on one side, and on the other the monogram of Constantine’s 
labarum with the following words, Vince in hoc , Deo duce , 
comite ferro. The consecration of the sword must take place 
on Sunday, in the hours of sunlight, under the invocation of 
Michael. The sword blade must be thrust into a fire of 
laurel and cypress wood ; it must then be dried and polished 


208 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


with ashes of the sacred fire, moistened with the blood of 
the mole or serpent, these words being said :— Sis mihi 
gladius Michaelis , in virtute Elo'im Sabaoth fugiant a te 
spiritus tenebrarum et reptilia terra; it must then be per¬ 
fumed with the perfumes of the Sun, and wrapped up in 
silk with branches of vervain, which must be burned on the 
seventh day. 

The magic lamp should be made of four metals—gold, 
silver, brass, and iron. The pedestal should be of iron, the 
joint of brass, the reservoir of silver, and the central triangle 
of gold. It should have two arms, composed of three metals 
intertwisted, but in such a manner as to leave a triple conduit 
for the oil. It should have nine wicks, three in the middle 
and three in each arm. On the pedestal must be engraved 
the Hermetic Seal, with the two-headed Androgyne of 
Khunrath above. The lower rim of the pedestal should 
represent a serpent biting its own tail. On the reservoir 
for the oil the seal of Solomon must be engraved. Two 
globes must be adapted to this lamp, one ornamented with 
transparent pictures representing the seven genii, the other 
larger and double, arranged to hold water tinctured with 
various colouring matters in four compartments between the 
two glasses. The whole must be enclosed in a revolving 
pillar of wood, which shall permit at will the escape of one 
of the lamp’s rays, so that it may be turned on the altar of 
perfumes at the moment of invocation. This lamp is of 
great use in assisting the intuitive operations of slow 
imaginations, and in instantaneously creating for magnetized 
persons shapes of terrible reality, which, multiplied by mirrors, 
will at once enlarge and change the operator’s cabinet into 
one vast hall filled with visible souls. The intoxication of 
perfumes and the exaltation of invocations, soon transform 
this phantasmagoria into a real dream; we recognize those 
whom we have known, and ghosts speak; then if we close 
the pillar of the lamp, an extraordinary and unexpected 
phenomenon will be produced by redoubling the perfumes. 

V.— Black Magic. 

We approach the domain of black magic* We are about 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


209 


to assail, even in his withdrawn sanctuary, the darksome 
deity of the Sabbath, the formidable goat of Mendes, the 
phantom full of horrors, the dragon of every theogony, the 
Ahriman of the Persians, the Typhon of the Egyptians, 
the Python of the Greeks, the old serpent of the Jews, 
the bearded idol of mediaeval alchemists, the Baphomet of 
the Templars. Let us declare, for the edification of the un¬ 
initiated, for the satisfaction of M. le Comte de Mirville, 
for the justification of Bodin the demonologist, and for 
the greater glory of the Church, which has persecuted the 
Templars, burned the magicians, and excommunicated the 
Freemasons, let us say boldly and loudly, that all initiates 
of the occult sciences—I speak of the inferior initiates and 
the betrayers of the Great Arcanum—have adored, do, and 
will always adore that which is signified by the frightful 
figure of the sabbatic goat. 

Yes, in our profound conviction, the grand masters of the 
order of the Templars adored Baphomet, and caused him to 
be adored by their initiates; yes, there have existed, and there 
may still be, assemblies presided over by this figure, seated on 
a throne and with a flaming torch between its horns ; only the 
worshippers of this sign do not think it the representation of 
the devil as we do, but rather that of the god Pan, the god of 
our modern philosophical schools, the god of the Alexandrian 
theurgists, and of our present neoplatonic mystics, the god of 
Lamartine and Cousin, of Spinoza, Plato, and the early 
Gnostics; even the Christ of dissident sacerdotalism; and 
this last designation should not astonish students of religious 
antiquities who have followed through their various transfor¬ 
mations the phases of doctrine and symbolism in India, 
Egypt, and Judea. The bull, dog, and goat, are the three 
symbolical animals of Hermetic magic, wherein all the 
traditions of Egypt and India are summed up. The bull 
represents the earth or salt of the philosophers ; the dog, that 
is, Hermanubis, the Mercury of the sages, signifies fluid, air, 
and water; the goat represents fire, and is at the same time 
the symbol of generation. In Judea, two goats were con¬ 
secrated, one pure and one unclean, the latter was sacrificed 
in expiation of sins, the former, loaded by imprecation with 
the same sins, was turned adrift into the desert—a strange 


O 


210 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


observance, but one profound in its symbolism—reconciliation 
by self-sacrifice, and expiation by liberty ! Now, all the 
fathers who have concerned themselves with Jewish types, 
have recognised in the immolated goat the figure of him who 
took on Himself the very form of sin. Thus the Gnostics 
were not beside symbolic traditions when they gave to the 
Christ deliverer the mystical figure of the goat. All the 
Kabbalah and all magic is, in fact, divided between the cultus 
of the sacrificed goat and that of the emissary goat. There is, 
therefore, a magic of the sanctuary and one of the wilderness, 
a white church and a black church, a priesthood of public 
assemblies, and the Sanhedrim of the Sabbath. 

The Baphomet of the Templars, whose name should be 
spelt kabbalistically backward, is composed of three abbrevia¬ 
tions —Tem oph ab, Templi omnium hominum pads abbas , the 
father of the temple of the peace of all men. According to 
some, it was a monstrous head, according to others, a goat¬ 
shaped demon. A sculptured casket, unearthed in the ruins 
of an ancient commandry of the Templars, was observed by 
antiquaries to be a baphometic figure, conformable in its 
attributes to our goat of Mendes and the androgyne of 
Khunrath. It is bearded, but with the entire body of a 
woman; in one hand it holds the sun, in the other the moon, 
joined to it by chains. This virile head is a beautiful allegory 
which attributes to thought alone the first and creative 
cause. The head here represents mind, and the female body 
symbolizes matter. The stars, bound to the human form and 
directed by that nature of which intelligence is the head, have 
also a sublime significance. The terrible Baphomet is, in 
fact, like all monstrous enigmas of ancient science, nothing 
more than an innocent and even pious hieroglyph. Let us de¬ 
clare emphatically, to combat the remnants of Manichaeanism, 
that Satan, as a superior personality and power, has no 
existence. The devil, in black magic, is the great magic 

AGENT EMPLOYED FOR EVIL PURPOSES BY A PERVERSE WILL. 

We have spoken of Manichaeanism, and it is by this 
monstrous heresy that we shall account for the aberrations of 
black magic. The doctrine of Zoroaster misinterpreted, that 
magical law of two forces producing universal equilibrium, has 
created in illogical minds a negative divinity, subordinate but 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


21 


hostile to the active divinity, and thus has caused the madness 
of dividing God. The evil divinity, born in the imagination 
of sectarians, became the prompter of all follies and crimes. 
Sanguinary sacrifices were offered him, monstrous idolatry 
usurped the place of the true religion, black magic caused the 
supreme and mminous magic of veritable adepts to be 
calumniated, and atrocious gatherings of sorcerers, ghouls, and 
vampires took place in caverns and forsaken places; for 
imbecility soon changes into frenzy, and it is only a step from 
human sacrifices to cannibalism. 

The mysteries of the Sabbath have been variously described, 
but all the revelations made on this subject may be divided 
into three series: i, Those which are connected with a 
fantastic and imaginary Sabbath; 2, Those which betray the 
secrets of the occult assemblies of real adepts ; 3, Revelations 
of lunatic and criminal gatherings, which had as their object 
the practice of black magic. For a great number of pitiable 
wretches abandoned to these stupid and abominable pur¬ 
suits, the Sabbath was only a long nightmare, where dreams 
appeared to be realities, and these dreams were obtained by 
means of beverages, fumigations, and narcotic frictions. 
Baptista Porta gives us, in his Natural Magic, the pretended 
recipe for the sorcerer’s unguent, by means of which they were 
carried to the Sabbath. It was composed of children’s fat, of 
aconite boiled with poplar leaves, and some other drugs; soot 
must be mixed with these, which would render the nakedness 
of sorceresses, who went to the Sabbath rubbed over with such 
a pomade, the very reverse of attractive. A more serious 
recipe is given by the same mystificator, and this we leave in 
its original Latin to retain its grimoire character:— Recipe — 
suim, acorum vulgare, pentaphyllon , verspertillionis sanguinem 
solanum somniferuin et oleum , the whole to be well boiled and 
stirred to the consistence of an ointment. 

We imagine that opiates like the pith of green hemp, 
datura stramonium , and the laurel-almond, would enter with 
no less success into similar compounds. The fat or blood 
of night-birds joined to such narcotics, with the ceremonies 
of black magic, would impress the imagination and determine 
the direction of dreams. It is to Sabbaths dreamed in this 
manner that we must refer the tales of goats issuing from 


212 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


pitchers and returning therein at the conclusion of the 
ceremony, of infernal powders collected behind the same 
creature, known as Maitre Leonard; of banquets where 
abortions were eaten without salt and along with toads and 
serpents; of dances where monstrous animals or human 
beings with impossible shapes took part, &c. Nightmare 
alone could produce and alone explain such horrors. But 
the Sabbath was not always a dream, it was a real fact; 
secret nocturnal assemblies exist even at this day, and the 
rites of the ancient world are practised there; some of these 
assemblies have a religious character and a social object, 
while others are conspiracies and orgies. When Christianity 
proscribed the public exercise of the ancient forms of worship, 
it reduced their partisans to the necessity of meeting in 
secret for the celebration of their mysteries. Initiates pre¬ 
sided at these assemblies and soon established among the 
different shades of such persecuted beliefs a sort of ortho¬ 
doxy, which true magic enabled them to do with the greater 
facility, because proscription unites wills and strengthens the 
bonds of brotherhood between men. In this manner, the 
mysteries of Isis, of the Eleusinian Ceres, and of Bacchus, 
were blended with those of the benevolent goddess and 
primeval druidism. The assemblies were commonly held 
between the days of Mercury and Jupiter, or between those 
of Venus and Saturn ; the rites of initiation were celebrated, 
mysterious signs exchanged, symbolic hymns sung, banquets 
partaken of, and the magic chain was successively formed at 
the table and in the dance; then the assembly broke up, 
after renewing their pledges in the presence of the chiefs, 
and receiving their instructions in return. The neophyte of 
the Sabbath was led, or rather carried, to the meeting with 
his eyes covered by the magic mantle, in which he was 
indeed wholly enveloped; he was made to pass between 
great fires, and alarming noises were caused round him. 
When his face was uncovered he found himself surrounded 
by infernal monsters and in front of a colossal and monstrous 
goat, which he was required to adore. All these ceremonies 
were trials of his strength of character and his belief in his 
initiators. The final trial was decisive above all, because it 
presented, at first sight, something ridiculous and humiliating 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


213 


to the mind of the neophyte; it was a question of respectfully 
kissing the goat’s posterior, and the order was given without 
circumlocution. If he refused, his head was again covered, 
and he was borne away with such rapidity that he believed 
himself transported on a cloud ; if he consented, he was taken 
behind the symbolic idol, and there found not a repulsive 
and obscene object, but the youthful and gracious face of a 
priestess of Isis or Maia, who gave him a maternal salute, and 
he was then admitted to the banquet. As for the orgies 
which, in many assemblies of this nature, were said to follow 
the feast, we must beware of supposing that they were 
generally allowed at these secret agapce , but it is known that 
various Gnostic sects did practise them at their gatherings 
from the earliest Christian centuries. That the flesh had its 
protestants in the ages of asceticism and compression of the 
senses is no cause for surprise, but we should not accuse 
transcendent magic of the irregularities which it never has 
authorized. Isis is chaste in her widowhood, Diana Panthea 
is a virgin, Hermanubis having both sexes can satisfy neither, 
the Hermetic Hermaphrodite is pure, Apollonius Tyaneus 
never yielded to the seductions of pleasure, the Emperor 
Julian was a man of repellent austerity, Plotinus was rigorous 
as an ascetic in his morals, Paracelsus was such a stranger 
to the extravagances of love that even his sex became doubt¬ 
ful, Raymond Lully was initiated into the final mysteries of 
science only after a hopeless love which made him chaste for 
ever. It is also a tradition of supreme magic that pantacles 
and talismans lose all their virtue when he who wears them 
enters a house of ill-fame or commits an adultery. The 
Sabbath of debauchery should not, therefore, be considered 
as that of the veritable adepts. As to the appellation 
Sabbath, some derive it from the name of Sabasius, and other 
etymologies have been conjectured. The simplest, in our 
opinion, is that which makes it come from the Jewish 
Sabbath, for it is certain that the Jews, the most faithful 
trustees of the secrets of the Kabbalah, were almost always 
the great masters of magic in the middle ages. The Sabbath 
was the Sunday of the Kabbalists, the day of their religious 
assembly, or rather the night of their habitual meeting. 
This festival, surrounded with mysteries as it was, found its 


214 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


safeguard in the .very fright of the vulgar, and escaped 
persecution through the terror it occasioned. As for the 
diabolic Sabbath of the necromancers, it was a spurious 
imitation of that held by the magi. Horrible rites were 
practised at it and abominable potions composed. Here 
sorcerers and sorceresses made their plans and instructed 
one another in sustaining mutually their repute for prophecy 
and divination, for diviners were generally consulted at that 
epoch, and exercised a lucrative calling while possessing 
a veritable power. These assemblies of sorcerers and 
sorceresses neither had nor could have regular rites ; all 
depended on the caprice of the chiefs and the whims of the 
assembly. What was recounted by those who assisted 
thereat served as a type to the nightmares of all such 
dreamers, and it is from the medley of these impossible 
realities and demoniacal hallucinations that the revolting and 
stupid histories figuring in magic trials and in the works of 
Spranger, Delancre, Delrio, and Bodin, have undoubtedly 
issued. 1 

After attributing a positive existence to the absolute 
negation of good, after enthroning the absurd and creating 
a god of lies, it remained for human imbecility to invoke this 
impossible idol. We were lately informed that the most 
venerable father Ventura, formerly superior of the Theatines, 
on reading one of our books, declared that the Kabbalah 
was, in his opinion, an invention of the devil, and that the 
star of Solomon was another artifice of the same personage 
to persuade the world that he, the devil, was identical with 
God. Such is the serious teaching of those who are rulers in 
Israel! The ideal of darkness and nothingness inventing a 
sublime philosophy which is the universal basis of faith and 
the keystone of every temple! The demon setting his 
signature by the side of God’s! My respectable masters in 
theology, you are more sorcerers than you suppose or is 
imagined; and He who said—The devil is a liar like his 
father—would also have something to remark on the decisions 
of your reverences. 

The evokers of the devil must before all things belong to 
1 See Note 29. 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


215 


a religion which believes in a devil who is the rival of God. 
To have recourse to a power we must believe in it. A firm 
faith being therefore granted in the religion of Satan, here is 
the method of communicating with this pseudo-God :— 

Magical Axiom. 

Within the circle of its action, every Logos creates what 
it affirms. 

Direct Consequence. 

He who affirms the devil creates the devil. 

Conditions of Success in Infernal Evocations. 

i. Invincible obstinacy. 2. A conscience at once hardened 
by crime and most subject to remorse and terror. 3. Affected 
or natural ignorance. 4. Blind faith in everything incredible. 
5. A completely false notion of God. 

It is requisite afterwards:—Firstly, to profane the cere¬ 
monies of the religion one belongs to and trample its holiest 
symbols under foot; secondly, to make a bloody sacrifice; 
thirdly, to procure the magic fork. This is a branch of a 
single beam of hazel or almond, which must be cut at a single 
stroke with the new knife used in the sacrifice; the rod must 
terminate in a fork which must be bound with iron or with 
steel made from the same knife with which it has been cut. 
A fifteen days’ fast must be observed, taking only one meal 
without salt after sundown; this repast must be made off 
black bread and blood seasoned with unsalted spices, or off 
black beans, and milky, narcotic herbs; every five days, after 
sunset, one must get drunk on wine in which five heads of 
black poppies and five ounces of bruised hemp have been 
steeped, the whole being contained in a cloth woven by a 
prostitute, though, strictly, the first cloth at hand may be used, 
if woven by a woman. The evocation may be performed 
either during the night between Monday and Tuesday or that 
between Friday and Saturday. A solitary and prohibited 
place must be chosen, such as a cemetery haunted by evil 
spirits, an avoided ruin in the country, the vault of an aban¬ 
doned convent, the spot where an assassination has been 
perpetrated, a druidic altar, or a former temple of idols. A 
black robe without seams or sleeves must be provided, a 


2 l6 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


leaden cap emblazoned with the signs of the Moon, Venus, 
and Saturn, two candles of human fat set in crescent-shaped 
candlesticks of black wood, a magic sword with a black 
handle, the magic fork, a copper vase holding the blood of 
the victim, a censer containing incense, camphor, aloes, 
ambergris, and storax, mixed and moistened with the blood 
of a goat, a mole, and a bat; four nails torn from the coffin 
of an executed criminal, the head of a black cat which has 
been fed on human flesh for five days, a bat drowned in 
blood, the horns of a goat cui?i quo puella concubuerit , and the 
skull of a parricide, are also indispensable. All these horrible 
and scarcely obtainable objects being collected, they must be 
arranged as follows :— 

A perfect circle must be traced with the sword, an opening 
or way out being, however, left; in the circle a triangle must 
be inscribed, and the pantacle thus traced by the sword must 
be dyed with blood; then, at one of the angles of the triangle, 
the three-footed chafing-dish must be placed, which should 
also have been mentioned among the indispensable objects; 
at the opposite base of the triangle three small circles must 
be made for the operator and his assistants, and behind the 
circle of the former, not with the blood of the victim but with 
the operator’s own blood, there must be traced the sign of the 
labarum or the monogram of Constantine. The operator or 
his acolytes should have naked feet and covered heads. The 
skin of the immolated victim must have also been brought, 
and, cut up into strips, must be placed within the circle, 
forming an inner circle fastened at four corners with the four 
nails already mentioned. Near these nails, but without the 
circle, must be placed the cat’s head, the human, or rather, 
the inhuman skull, the goat’s horns, and the bat; they must 
“ be aspersed with a branch of birch dipped in the victim’s 
blood, then a fire of cypress and alder wood must be lighted, 
and the two magic candles must be placed on the right and 
left, of the operator circled with vervain wreaths. 

< The formulae of evocation found in the magical elements 
of P r eter d’Apono 1 or in the Grimoires, whether printed or 
irr manuscript, may then be recited. Those in the Great 


1 See Note 30. 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


217 


Grimoire, reproduced in the common Red Dragon, have been 
wilfully altered in printing, and should read as follows :— 

“Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova, Adonai Sabaoth, 
Metraton On Agla Adonai Mathon, verbum pythonicum, 
mysterium salamandrae, conventus sylvorum, antra gnomo- 
rum, daemonia Coeli Gad, Almousin, Gibor, Jehosua, Evam, 
Zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.” 

The great invocation of Agrippa consists only in these 
words:— “Dies mies Jeschet Boenedoesef Douvema eni- 
temaus.” We do not pretend to understand what they 
mean, they have possibly no meaning, and can certainly have 
none which is rational, since they are of efficacy in conjuring 
up the devil, who is supreme senselessness. Doubtless in the 
same opinion, Mirandola affirms that the most barbarous and 
absolutely unintelligible words are the best and most powerful 
in black magic. Ridiculous practices and imbecile evocations 
induce hallucination better than rites which are calculated to 
keep the understanding vigilant. Dupotet affirms that he has 
tried the power of certain signs over ecstatics, and those in 
his “Magic Unveiled” are in complete analogy if not absol¬ 
utely identical with the diabolical signatures found in old 
editions of the “Great Grimoire.” The same causes will 
always produce the same effects, and there is nothing new 
under the moon of the sorcerers any more than beneath the 
sun of the sages. 

The conjurations should be repeated in a raised tone, 
accompanied by imprecations and menaces, till the spirit 
responds. The spirit is usually preceded by a violent wind 
which seems to howl through the whole country. Domestic 
animals tremble when they hear it, and seek a hiding place; 
the assistants feel a breath upon their faces, and their hair, 
damp with cold sweat, stands up on their heads. The great 
and supreme charge is, according to Peter d’Apono :— 

u Hemen-Etan ! Hemen-Etan ! Hemen-Etan ! El* Ati* 
Titeip* Aozia* Hyn* Teu* Minosei* Achadon* vay* 
vaa* Eye* Aaa* Eie* Exe* A EL EL EL A* HY! Hau ! 
Hau ! Hau! Hau! va! va ! va ! va ! CHAVAJOTH. 

“Aie Saraye, aie Saraye, aie Saraye! per Eloym, Ar- 
chima, Rabur, Bathas super Abrac mens superveniens 
Abeor super Aberer Chavajothl Chavajoth! Chava- 


2 18 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


joth! impero tibi per clavem Salomonis et nomen magnum 
Semhamphoras. ” 

Evocations were frequently followed by pacts, which were 
written on parchment of goat skin with an iron pen and in 
blood drawn from the left arm of the victim. There was 
a duplicate memorandum, the demon carrying away one 
while the voluntary reprobate swallowed the other. The 
mutual engagement was that the devil should serve the 
sorcerer for a certain number of years, and that the sorcerer 
should belong to the devil after a definite time. The Church 
by her exorcisms has consecrated the belief in all these 
things, and it may be said that black magic with its prince 
of darkness is a realistic, living, and terrible creation of 
Roman Catholicism ; that it is even its special and character¬ 
istic work, for the priests do not invent God. 1 So true 
Catholics cling from the bottom of their hearts to the pre¬ 
servation and even regeneration of this magnum opus which 
is the philosophic stone of the official and positive cultus. 
In thieves’ slang the devil is called the boulanger; all our 
desire, and we speak no longer as a magus but as a devoted 
child of Christianity, and of that Church to which we owe 
our first education and our earliest enthusiasms, all our 
desire, we say, is that the phantom of Satan may be no 
longer called the pot-boiler of the ministers of morality and 
the representatives of the highest virtue. Will they under¬ 
stand our sentiment ? Will they pardon the boldness of our 
aspirations in view of our unselfish intentions and of the 
sincerity of our faith ? The devil-creating magic which 
dictated the Grimoire of Honorius, 2 the Enchiridion of 
Leo III., the exorcisms of the Ritual, andM;he sentences of 
the Inquisition, the black magic of sorcerers, and of pious 
people who are not sorcerers, is something truly detestable in 
the one and infinitely deplorable in the other. It is above 
all to combat, by exposing them, these unhappy aberrations 
of the human mind, that we have published this book. May 
it help in the cause of the holy work ! 

1 See Critical Essay. 


See Note 31. 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


219 


VI.— Witchcraft and Spells. 

“Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath 
already committed adultery with her in his heart,” said the 
Great Master. What we desire persistently we perform. 
Every true will is confirmed by acts; every will confirmed 
by an act is an action. Every action is subject to a judg¬ 
ment, and this judgment is eternal. The good or evil 
which you desire, whether for yourself or others, within the 
scope of your will and the sphere* of your activity, follows 
infallibly, if your will be confirmed and your determination 
be fixed by deeds. Actions should be analogous to the 
desire. The wish to do harm or to be loved should be 
confirmed by works of hatred or love, if it is to be efficacious. 
Whatever bears the impress of the human soul belongs to 
that soul; whatever man appropriates, in whatever manner, 
becomes his body in the wider sense of the term, and what¬ 
ever is done to the body of a man is experienced mediately 
or immediately by his soul. For this reason every species 
of hostile action towards our neighbour is looked on by 
moral theology as a beginning of homicide. A bewitchment 
is a homicide, and the baser because it eludes the victim’s 
right of self-defence and the punishment of the laws. This 
principle established, for the acquittal of our conscience 
and the warning of the weak, let us make bold to assert 
that bewitchment is possible, and not only possible, but, 
in a certain sense, necessary and fatal. It is continually 
taking place in the world, unknown both to agents and 
victims. Involuntary witchcraft is one of the most terrible 
dangers of human life. 

Sensual sympathy necessarily subjects the most ardent 
desire to the most powerful will. Moral diseases are more 
contagious than those which are physical, and we can die 
of an evil acquaintance even as of a contagious contact. 
The horrible plague which for some centuries only has 
avenged on Europe the profanation of the mysteries of love 
is a revelation of the analogical laws of nature, and, hideous 
as it is, presents only a feeble image of the moral corruptions 
daily consequent on an illicit sympathy. A story is told of 


220 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


a jealous and infamous man who, to avenge himself on a 
rival, voluntarily contracted an incurable complaint, and 
made it at once the common scourge and curse of a divided 
couch. This appalling history is that of every sorcerer 
who practises witchcraft. He poisons himself that he may 
poison, he condemns himself to hell that he may torture 
others, he inhales perdition that he may breathe it forth, 
he wounds himself to death that he may inflict death; but 
possessed of so much unhappy courage, it is positive and 
certain that he will empoison and destroy by the mere pro¬ 
jection of his perverse will. 

There are then two kinds of betwitchment—the involuntary 
and the voluntary; we may also distinguish physical from 
moral witchcraft. Power attracts power, life attracts life, and 
health attracts health—this is a law of nature. If two children 
live, and above all sleep, together, and if one of them be strong 
and the other weakly, the strong one will absorb the sickly 
one, who will waste gradually away. In boarding-schools 
certain pupils absorb the intelligence of others, and in every 
circle of men an individual is quickly discovered who avails 
himself of the wills of the rest. Bewitchment by means of 
currents is a very common thing; one is carried away by the 
crowd both morally and physically. But we have to establish 
specially in this chapter the almost absolute power of the 
human will over the determination of its acts, and the influence 
of every exterior demonstration of a will on things themselves 
exterior. 

Voluntary bewitchments are still frequent in rural districts, 
because among ignorant and isolated people the forces of 
nature have full play, not being weakened by any doubt or 
deflection. An open, absolute hatred, unmixed with dis¬ 
appointed passion or personal cupidity, is a death-sentence for 
its object, under certain giveif conditions. I say, unmixed 
with amorous passion or self-interest, because a desire, being 
an attraction, counterbalances and annuls the power of pro¬ 
jection. A jealous man will never efficaciously bewitch his 
rival, nor will a covetous heir shorten, by the mere fact of his 
will, the lifetime of an avaricious uncle. Bewitchments 
attempted under such conditions fall back on their performers, 
and are rather favourable than hurtful to their object, as they 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


221 


deliver them from a hostile action which destroys itself through 
unmeasured over-excitement. 

The instrument of witchcraft is nothing else than the Great 
Magic Agent itself, which under the influence of an evil will 
becomes really and positively the demon. Witchcraft properly 
so called, that is, ceremonial operation with a view to bewitch¬ 
ing, acts only on the performer, and serves to fix and confirm 
his will by laboriously and perseveringly formulating it, the 
two conditions necessary to render the will efficacious. The 
more difficult and horrible the operation, the more potent it 
is, because it acts better on the imagination, and confirms the 
effort in the direct ratio of resistance. This explains the 
fantastic nature and even the atrocity of the operations of 
black magic among the ancients and in the Middle Ages—the 
devil’s masses, the administration of the sacraments to reptiles, 
the effusions of blood, the human sacrifices, and other 
monstrosities, which are the very essence and reality of witch¬ 
craft and necromancy. These and similar practices have in 
all ages brought down on sorcerers the just repression of the 
laws. Black magic is really but a combination of sacrileges 
and murders graduated with a view to the permanent perver¬ 
sion of the human will and the realization in a living man of 
the monstrous phantom of the fiend. It is, therefore, properly 
speaking, the religion of the devil, the worship of darkness 
the hatred of goodness exaggerated to the point of paroxysm; 
it is the incarnation of death and the permanent creation of 
hell. 

What sorcerers and necromancers sought, above all in their 
evocations of the impure spirit, was that magnetic power 
which is the possession of the true adept, and they desired to 
usurp that they might abuse it shamefully. The true magus, 
without ceremonial, and by his simple reprobation, casts spells 
on those whom he condemns and deems it necessary to punish; 
he even does so by his pardon of those who do him evil, and 
never do the enemies of the initiates carry far the impunity 
of their injustice. The executioners of martyrs always perish 
miserably, and the adepts are the martyrs of intelligence; 
Providence seems to contemn those who contemn them and to 
inflict death on those who would deprive them of life. The 
legend of the Wandering Jew is the popular version of this 


222 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


arcanum. A nation drove a wise man to his execution; it 
cried to him, “ Go forward! ” when he wished to rest a 
moment; and lo, this nation undergoes the same doom ! It 
is proscribed wholly and for centuries; it is told to get on¬ 
ward, finding neither rest nor compassion. . . . The magi 
condemn after the fashion of skilful physicians, and for this 
reason there is no appeal from their sentences when they have 
passed judgment on a guilty person. They use neither 
ceremonies nor invocations; they have only to forbear from 
eating at the same table with the doomed individual, and if 
they be forced to do so, they must neither accept from nor 
offer him salt. 

Far different are the bewitchments of sorcerers, which may 
be compared to a real poisoning of the Astral Light. They 
exalt their will with ceremonies till it becomes venomous at a 
distance, but they expose themselves most frequently to the 
danger of being the first to be destroyed by their infernal 
machinations. Let us reveal here a few of their infamous 
proceedings. 

They procure either some of the hair or garments of the 
person whom they wish to curse ; then they choose an 
animal which they consider the symbol of that person; by 
means of the hair or garments, they place this animal in 
magnetic rapport with the individual; they give it his name, 
then they slay it with one blow of the magic knife, open its 
breast, tear out the heart, which they envelop while still 
palpitating in the magnetized objects, and for three days 
they hourly pierce this heart with nails, red-hot pins, or long 
thorns, pronouncing maledictions at the same time on the 
name of the bewitched person. They are then convinced 
(and often rightly) that the victim of their infamous manoeuvres 
experiences as many torments as if he had himself been 
probed to the heart with every one of the points. He begins 
to waste away, and at the end of a certain time dies of an 
unknown complaint. 

Another spell used in country places consists in conse¬ 
crating certain nails for works of vengeance with the foetid 
fumigations of Saturn, accompanied by invocations of evil 
genii, then in following the footsteps of the person whom 
it is desired to torment, and pricking in the form of a cross 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


223 


every step which can be traced on the earth or in the 
sand. 

One still more abominable is practised as follows:—A 
large toad is taken, baptism is administered to it, and it is 
given the name and surname of the person whom it is desired 
to curse; it is made to swallow a consecrated host whereon 
the formulae of execration have been pronounced; then it is 
enveloped in the magnetized objects, bound with the hair of 
the victim, on which the operator has previously spat, and the 
whole is buried either beneath the threshold of the bewitched 
person’s door, or in a place where he is bound to pass daily. 
The elementary spirit of the toad becomes a nightmare and 
vampire for the victim’s dreams, unless, at any rate, he knows 
how to send it back to the malefactor. 

Let us come now to bewitchment with waxen images. 
The necromancers of the Middle Ages, anxious to please 
by means of sacrileges him whom they looked on as their 
master, mixed baptismal oil, and the ashes of burnt hosts, 
with wax. Apostate priests were always found to surrender 
to them the treasures of the Church. With this accursed 
wax they formed an image resembling as closely as possible 
the person they desired to bewitch; they clothed the image 
with garments similar to his, gave it the sacraments which 
he himself received, called down on its head all the male¬ 
dictions which could give expression to the hate of the 
sorcerer, and inflicted daily on this anathematized figure 
imaginary tortures, so that the person whom the figure 
represented might be sympathetically reached and tormented. 

Witchcraft is more infallible if the hair, blood, or, better 
than either, a tooth of the person to be bewitched can be 
obtained. Bewitchment is also accomplished by the glance, 
which is called in Italy the jettatura, or the evil eye. 

The method of Ceremonial Witchcraft varies with times 
and with persons. All crafty and domineering people 
find its secrets and practice in themselves, without even 
actually computing them or reasoning on their sequence. 
They follow the instinctive inspirations of the great agent, 
which marvellously assimilates itself to our vices and virtues ; 
but it may be generally said that we are subjected to the 
will of others by the analogies of our attractions, and 


224 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


above all by our failings. To flatter the weaknesses of 
an individuality is to avail one’s self of it and make it an 
instrument in the order of the same errors or depravities. 
Now, when two natures with analogical defects are brought 
to bear on one another, there occurs a sort of substitution 
of the stronger for the weaker, and a veritable obsession of 
one mind by the other. Frequently the weaker struggles and 
seeks to revolt, but he falls deeper than ever into servitude. 
Thus, Louis XIII. conspired against Richelieu, and afterwards 
bought his forgiveness, so to speak, by abandoning his accom¬ 
plices. We have all a dominant weakness, which is for our 
soul like the umbilical cord of its birth in sin, and it is by 
this that the enemy can always seize us—vanity for some, 
idleness for others, egotism for the greater number. You 
become, thereupon, not mad, not idiotic, but positively 
deranged, in all the force of the expression, that is, subjected 
to foreign impetus. In this state you have an instinctive 
horror of everything that may restore you to reason, and will 
not even hear representations which are contrary to your 
lunacy. This is one of the most dangerous maladies which 
can attack the moral nature of man. The sole remedy for 
such witchcraft is to make use of madness for the cure of 
madness, and to find for the sufferer imaginary satisfactions 
in a contrary order to that in which he has lost himself. 
Thus, for example, we may cure an ambitious person by 
making him desire the glories of Heaven—mystical remedy ; 
we may cure a debauched person by an innocent affection— 
natural remedy ; we may obtain honourable successes for a 
vain person give an example of disinterestedness to an 
avaricious one, and procure him a just profit by an honour¬ 
able participation in generous enterprises, &c. Acting thus 
on the moral nature, we shall heal a large number of physical 
diseases, for the moral nature influences the physical in virtue 
of the magical axiom—“That which is above is like that 
which is below,” for which reason the Master said, speaking 
of a paralytic woman—“ Satan hath bound her ! ” A disease 
comes always from defect or excess, and you will invariably 
find a moral disorder at the root of a physical evil. 1 This is 
an unvarying law of Nature. 

1 See Note 32. 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


225 


A threat is a real spell, because it acts vividly on the 
imagination, above all, if this imagination easily receive 
belief in occult and illimitable power. The frightful menace 
of hell, that bewitchment of humanity during so many 
centuries, has created more nightmares, more violent mad¬ 
ness, than all vices and excesses put together. It is this 
which the mediaeval Hermetic artists represented in the 
incredible and unheard of monsters which they carved over 
the doorways of their basilicas. But bewitchment by threat 
produces an absolutely contrary effect to that which the 
operator desires when the menace is evidently vain, when it 
revolts the legitimate pride of the threatened individual, and 
consequently provokes his resistance, or, finally, when it is 
ridiculous in its atrocity. The sectaries of the hell-dogma 
have discredited heaven. Inform a reasonable man that 
equilibrium is a law of life and motion, and that moral equili¬ 
brium, or liberty, rests on an eternal and immutable 
distinction between truth and falsehood, good and evil; tell 
him that, endowed as he is with free-will, he must place 
himself by his works in the empire of truth and goodness, or 
fall back eternally, like the rock of Sisyphus, into the chaos 
of falsehood and wickedness, then he will understand your 
dogma ; and if you call truth and goodness heaven, false¬ 
hood and evil hell, he will believe in your heaven and hell, 
above which the divine ideal rests calm, perfect, and equally 
I inaccessible to anger and offence, because he will compre¬ 
hend that if perdition as a principle be eternal, like liberty, 
it cannot be as a fact more than a passing purgation for souls, 
since it is an expiation, and the idea of expiation necessarily 
supposes that of reparation and the destruction of evil. 

The first method—moral and rational—of counteracting 
witchcraft is to be reasonable and just, and never to give a 
handle or argument to anger. Legitimate anger is a thing to 
be feared, for which reason we should hasten to acknowledge 
and expiate our wrongdoings. Should anger persist after 
this, it certainly proceeds from vice; seek to know what vice, 
and unite yourself firmly to the magnetic currents of the 
opposite virtue. No spell will then have further power over 
you. Cause all linen and garments which you have worn to 
be carefully washed before giving them away, or else burn 


p 




226 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


them; never use a garment worn by a stranger without 
purifying it with water, sulphur, and such aromatics as 
camphor, incense, or amber. 

Paracelsus, the greatest of the Christian magi, opposed 
to bewitchment a spell of an opposite character. He com¬ 
pounded sympathetic remedies, and applied them not to the 
suffering parts but to representations of the same, formed and 
consecrated according to ceremonial magic. His success 
was prodigious, and never has any physician approached 
the phenomenal cures of Paracelsus, who, however, had 
discovered magnetism long before Mesmer, and had carried 
to its final consequences this brilliant discovery, or rather, 
this initiation into the magic of the ancients, who understood 
better than we do the Great Magic Agent, and did not make 
the Astral Light, the universal magnesia of the sages, an 
animal and special fluid emanating only from some particular 
individuals. 

Bewitchment is also cured by substitution, when possible, 
and by the rupture or turning aside of the astral current. 
Rural traditions on this subject are admirable, and un¬ 
doubtedly come from remote antiquity—they are remnants 
of the teaching of the Druids, who were initiated into the 
mysteries of Egypt and India by wandering hierophants. 
Now, in vulgar magic, a bewitchment, that is, a will deter¬ 
mined and confirmed in ill-doing, invariably produces its 
effect, and cannot retract without danger of death. The 
sorcerer who frees some one from a spell must have another 
object for his malevolence, or it is certain that he himself 
will be assailed, and perish by his own witchcraft. The 
astral movement being circular, every azotic or magnetic 
projection which does not encounter its medium returns with 
increased force to its starting-point; this explains one of the 
strangest histories in any sacred book, that of the demons 
driven into the swine, who precipitated themselves into the 
sea. Demoniacal possessions are nothing but bewitchment, 
and an incredible number of possessed persons still exist in 
our own day. Antipathy itself is the presentiment of a 
possible bewitchment, which may be one of love or hate, 
for affection is frequently known to succeed antipathy. 
The Astral Light warns us of coming influences by a more 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


227 


or less sensible and lively action on the nervous system. 
Instantaneous sympathies and electrifying loves are ex¬ 
plosions of the Astral Light, as exactly produced, and as 
mathematically explicable and demonstrable, as the discharges 
of powerful electric batteries. The nervous apparatuses 
destined for attraction or projection are particularly the eyes 
and hands. The polarity of the hands is situated in the 
thumbs, for which reason, according to the magical tradition 
still preserved in country places, we must, when we find our¬ 
selves in suspicious company, keep the thumb doubled up 
and concealed in the hand, taking care not to attract the 
notice of any one, but for all that endeavouring to be the 
first to look at those from whom we have anything to fear, 
so as to avoid unexpected fluidic projections and fascinating 
glances. There are also certain animals who have the 
property of breaking the currents of Astral Light by an 
absorption peculiar to them. These animals are violently 
antipathetic to us, and have something fascinating in their 
glance. Among such are the toad, the basilisk, and the 
tard. These animals, when tamed and carried alive about 
the person, or kept in the rooms that we live in, guarantee 
us from the hallucinations of Astral Intoxication, a term 
which explains all phenomena of insane passions, mental 
exaltations, and madness. 

A great means of resisting bewitchment is not to fear it; 
bewitchment acts like contagious diseases. In times of pest, 
those who are afraid are the first to be attacked. The way 
not to fear an evil is not to think about it, and I strongly 
counsel nervous people, the weak, credulous, hysterical, and 
superstitious, devotees and foolish persons who are devoid 
of energy and will, never to open a work on magic, never 
to listen to those who speak of the occult sciences, even to 
scout them, and to drink water only, as the great pantagruelist 
magician, the excellent cure of Meudon, maitre Francis 
Rabelais, recommends. As for the wise, they have few 
witcheries to fear save those of fortune, but, as they are 
priests and physicians, they may be called on to cure the 
bewitched, and should then proceed as follows: They must 
prompt the victim to perform some good action towards 
the sorcerer, to render him some service which he cannot 


228 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


refuse, and to seek, directly or indirectly, to lead him to the 
communion of salt. A person who believes himself be¬ 
witched by execration and the interment of a toad should 
carry about him a living toad in a box of horn. For the 
bewitchment of the pierced heart, the sufferer must be made 
to eat a lamb’s heart, seasoned with sage and vervain, as 
also to wear a talisman of Venus or of the moon in a purse 
filled with camphor and salt. For bewitchment by the waxen 
figure, a more perfect figure must be fashioned, everything 
possible belonging to the person must be put on it, seven 
talismans must be placed round the neck with a large central 
pantacle representing the Pentagram, and it must be every 
day rubbed lightly with a mixture of oil and balsam, after 
pronouncing the Conjuration of the Four to turn aside the 
influence of elementary spirits. At the end of seven days 
the image must be consumed in consecrated fire, and we 
may rest assured that the statue fabricated by the sorcerer 
will at the same time lose all its virtue. 

There are certain loves which destroy as much as ever 
hatred does; there are absorbing passions under which we 
feel ourselves wasting away like the brides of vampires. 
The bewitchments of benevolence are a torment to the 
wicked. The prayers we address to God for the conversion 
of a man do him harm if he will not be converted. The 
vows of parents pledging the future of their children are 
bewitchments which cannot be sufficiently condemned ; 
children dedicated in white, for example, scarcely ever 
prosper; those formerly vowed to celibacy commonly fell 
into debauchery, or ended in despair and insanity. It is 
not permitted to man to do violence to destiny, still less to 
impose restrictions on the lawful use of liberty. 

We come now to the most criminal abuse of Magic, the 
fabrication of philtres and sorcery in its application to 
poisoning. Here it must be understood that we write not 
to instruct others in this diabolical art, but to forewarn. 
Had human justice, when punishing the adepts, arraigned 
only the sorcerers, it is certain that its penalties would have 
been just, and that the severest intimidations could never 
be excessive for these and similar wretches. Alexandre 
Dumas, in his romance of “ Monte Cristo,” has exposed 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


229 


some practices of this deadly science. We shall not repro¬ 
duce after him its miserable and criminal experiments, as, for 
example, how the sorcerers poisoned plants, how animals 
nourished on such plants became unwholesome flesh, and 
when they were made, in their turn, the food of men, caused 
death, yet left no trace of poison; we shall not relate by 
what venomous unguents they infected the walls of houses, 
and the air by fumigations which required for the operator 
the glass mask of St Croix; we leave the ancient Canidia her 
abominable mysteries, and will not inquire how far the 
infernal rites of Sagane have perfected the art of Locusta. 
It is enough to say that these malefactors of the worst kind 
distilled together the virus of contagious diseases, the venom 
of reptiles, and the noxious sap of plants; that they extracted 
from fungi their poisonous and narcotic humour, from the 
datura stramonium its asphyxiating properties, from the 
peach and the laurel-almond that liquid one drop of which, 
placed on the tongue or in the ear, destroys, like a flash of 
lightning, the strongest and best constituted living being. 
They stewed milk, in which vipers and asps had been 
drowned, with the white juice of the milk-thistle; they 
collected carefully and brought with them from their long 
voyages, or else caused to be imported at great expense, 
the essence of the upas, or the deadly fruit of Java, the juice 
of the manioc, and other poisons; they pulverized silex, 
mixed up the dried saliva of reptiles with polluted ashes, 
composed hideous philtres with the virus of mares or 
secretions of bitches on heat, mingled human blood with vile 
drugs, and thence fabricated oil of which the mere odour 
was fatal; they even disguised recipes for poisoning in the 
technical terms of alchemy, and in more than orie pseudo- 
hermetic book the secret of the powder of projection is 
nothing more than the powder of consecution. In the Great 
Grimoire one of these recipes is still to be found, less dis¬ 
guised than others, but entitled “ Method of Making Gold; ” 
it is a frightful decoction of verdigris, vitriol, arsenic, and 
sawdust, which, when in condition, should immediately con¬ 
sume a twig dipped therein, and eat through a nail. Baptista 
Porta, in his “ Natural Magic,” gives a process for the poison 
of the Borgias; but, as may be well imagined, he is deceiving 


2 3 ° 


THE MYSTERIES OE MAGIC 


his readers, and does not divulge the truth, which would have 
been too dangerous in such a matter. We may therefore 
give his recipe to gratify the curiosity of our readers. 

The toad by itself is not venomous, but it is like a sponge 
for poisons; it is the fungus of the animal race. “ Take, 
therefore, a large toad,” says Porta, “ and shut it up in a glass 
bowl with asps and vipers; feed them for several days on 
poisonous fungi, foxglove, and hemlock exclusively; then 
irritate them by beating, burning and torturing them in every 
conceivable way till they expire of rage and hunger; sprinkle 
their bodies with the dust of pulverized crystal and spurge, 
place them in a well-corked retort, and gradually evaporate 
all their moisture by heat; allow the whole to grow cool, and 
separate the ashes of the dead reptiles from the incombustible 
dust which will be found at the bottom of the retort; you 
will then have two poisons, one liquid and one in powder. 
The first will be as powerful as the terrible Aqua Toffana ; 
the second will, in a few days, dry up, age, and finally cause 
death amidst horrible sufferings, or in a universal debility, to 
any one who has swallowed a single pinch with his drink.” 
It must be confessed that this recipe has the most hideous 
and blackest magical complexion, and revoltingly recalls the 
abominable concoctions of Canidia and Medea. 

Similar powders the sorcerers pretended to receive at the 
Sabbath, and sold them at great prices to the ignorant and 
malicious. By the tradition of such mysteries they spread 
terror in country places, and succeeded in casting their spells. 
The imagination once impressed, the nervous system once 
attacked, the victim rapidly wasted away, the very fear of his 
relatives and friends completing his destruction. The sor¬ 
cerers were almost always a species of human toad swollen 
with long-cherished spite; they were poor, rebuffed by all, and 
consequently full of hatred. The fear they inspired was their 
consolation and revenge. Poisoned themselves by a society 
whose vices and refuse only were known to them, they in turn 
poisoned all who were weak enough to dread them, and 
avenged on youth and beauty their accursed old age and 
unendurable ugliness. 

The mere operation of these evil works and the accomplish¬ 
ment of these hideous mysteries constituted and confirmed 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


231 


what was then called the compact with the evil spirit. It is 
certain that the performer was dedicated body and soul to 
evil, and justly merited the universal and irrevocable reproba¬ 
tion expressed by the allegory of hell. 

To preserve oneself from bad influences, the first condition 
is to forbid any over-excitement to the imagination. All 
excitable people are more or less foolish, and a fool is always 
governed by his folly. Set yourself, therefore, above puerile 
fears and vague desires ; believe in the supreme wisdom, and 
be assured that this wisdom, having given you intelligence as 
the one means of attaining the knowledge of itself, can never 
seek to lay snares for your reason or understanding. You 
behold everywhere about you effects which are in proportion 
to causes, causes directed and modified by intelligence in the 
domain of humanity; in a word, you find goodness stronger 
and more esteemed than evil; why should you assume an 
immense irrationality in infinity, when there is reason in the 
finite ? God is visible in His works, and asks nothing from 
His creatures which contradicts the laws of their nature; 
have confidence, not in men who slander reason, for such are 
impostors or fools, but in the eternal reason which is the 
divine Logos, that veritable light offered like the sun to the 
intuition of every human being coming into this world. If you 
believe in the absolute reason, and if you desire truth and 
justice above all things, you need fear no one, and will love 
only the loveable. Your natural light will instinctively repel 
that of the wicked, because it will be governed by your will. 
Thus, even venomous substances which may be administered 
you will not affect your understanding; they will indeed make 
you sick but never criminal. 

The beverages which enfeeble the mind and disturb reason 
may assure the ascendancy already acquired by a perverse 
will. Prussic acid is the most terrible agent of such mental 
poisoning, for which reason we should avoid all distillations 
which savour of almonds, remove from our bedrooms all 
almond plants, the datura stramonium, almond soaps, essence 
of almonds, and in general all compositions with a predomi¬ 
nating almond scent, above all, when their action on the brain 
is seconded by that of amber. To diminish the activity of the 
intelligence is to proportionately augment the strength of an 


232 


THE MYSTERIES OE MAGIC 


insensate passion, and the love which is inspired by the philtres 
of sorcerers is a veritable stupefaction and the most shame¬ 
ful of all moral slaveries. The more we debilitate a slave the 
less is he able to free himself, and this is actually the secret 
of the sorceress of Apuleius and the beverages of Circe. The 
use of tobacco is a dangerous auxiliary of stupefying philtres 
for the poisoning of the rational faculties. The absorption of 
one will by another frequently changes a whole series of 
destinies, and it is not for ourselves only that we should watch 
over our relations, and learn to distinguish between pure and 
impure atmospheres, for the most dangerous philtres are 
invisible—those currents of radiating vital light which, ming¬ 
ling and interchanging, produce attractions and sympathies, as 
magnetic experiences leave no room to doubt. But the most 
terrible of all philtres are the mystical exaltations of misdirected 
devotion. What impurities will ever equal the nightmares of 
St Anthony, or the torments of St Theresa and St Angele de 
Foligny ? The last mentioned ecstatic applied a red-hot iron 
to her rebellious flesh, and found the material fire a refresh¬ 
ment to her concealed ardours. With what violence does 
nature demand that which we refuse her, but of which we are 
continually thinking of in order to detest it more strongly! 
What contributes to rendering women hysterical is their soft 
and hypocritical education. If they took more exercise, if 
they were instructed frankly and freely in worldly matters, 
they would be less capricious, less vain, less frivolous, and 
consequently less accessible to sinful seductions. Weakness 
is always in sympathy with vice, because vice itself is weak¬ 
ness under the mask of strength. Folly holds reason in 
horror, and in every way delights in the exaggerations of false¬ 
hoods. Cure, therefore, first, your diseased intelligence. The 
cause of all bewitchments, the poison of all philtres, the power 
of all sorcerers, are there. 


VII.— Transformations. 

St Augustine seriously doubts whether Apuleius could 
really have been changed into an ass by a Thessalian sorcerer, 
and theologians have debated long on the transmutation of 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


2 33 


Nebuchadnezzar into a wild beast. This merely proves that 
the eloquent doctor of Hippo was ignorant of magical secrets, 
and that the theologians in question had not advanced far in 
exegesis. In the opinion of the vulgar, transformations and 
metamorphoses have ever been the very essence of magic. 
Now, the crowd, which is the echo of opinion, is never 
entirely right and never wholly wrong. Magic really changes 
the nature of things, or, rather, modifies their appearances at 
pleasure, according to the strength of the operator’s will and 
the fascination of aspiring adepts. Speech creates forms, and 
when a person reputed infallible gives anything a name, he 
really transforms the object into the substance which is 
signified by the name that he gives it. The masterpiece of 
speech and of faith, in this order, is the real metamorphosis 
of a substance the outward semblance of which does not alter. 
Had Apollonius presented to his disciples a cup of wine, and 
had he said to them, “ This is my blood which ye shall 
drink for ever to perpetuate my life within you,” and had his 
disciples for centuries believed this transformation continued 
by the repetition of the same words, had they taken the wine, 
notwithstanding its scent and its savour, for the true, human, 
living blood of Apollonius, this master in theurgy would have 
to be acknowledged the most skilful of fascinators and the 
most powerful of magi; it would remain for us to adore him. 

It is well known that mesmerists can, in the imagination of 
their somnambulists, endow water with any taste they may 
choose, and if we suppose a magus possessing sufficient power 
over the Astral Light to mesmerize at the same time a whole 
assembly, otherwise prepared for mesmerism by a sufficient 
over-excitement, we could easily explain, not indeed the 
gospel miracle of Cana, but others of the same kind. 

The fascinations of love, resulting from the universal magic 
of nature, really transform persons and objects. Love is a 
dream of enchantments which transfigures the world; all 
becomes music and fragrance, all is intoxication and bliss. 
The beloved being is beautiful, is good, is splendid, sublime, 
infallible, radiant with health and happiness. . . . Then 
when the dream is dispelled, we appear to have fallen from 
the clouds, we look with disgust on the shameless sorceress 
who has taken the place of the fair Melusine, on the Thersites 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


2 34 

whom we took for Achilles or Nereus. Love begins as 
magician and ends as sorcerer. After creating the illusions 
of heaven on earth, it realizes those of hell; its hatred is as 
outrageous as its enthusiasm, because it is passional, that is, 
subjected to influences which are fatal for it. For this cause, 
the sages proscribe love, which they proclaim the enemy of 
reason. 

The life of creatures is a progressive transformation having 
forms which may be determined and renewed, preserved 
longer, or else destroyed sooner. If the notion of metem¬ 
psychosis were true, might we not say that debauch, repre¬ 
sented by Circe, changes men really and materially into swine, 
for the chastisement of vices would, on this hypothesis, be a 
lapse into those animal forms which correspond to them? 
Now, metempsychosis, which has been frequently mis¬ 
understood, has a perfectly true side—animal forms com¬ 
municate their sympathetic imprints to the astral body of man 
and are soon reflected on his features, according to the force 
of his habits. A man of intelligent and passive mildness 
assumes the ways and inert physiognomy of a sheep ; in 
somnambulism, however, it is no longer a person of sheep-like 
appearance but a sheep itself which is seen, as the ecstatic 
and learned Swedenborg experienced times out of number. 
Thus we can really change men into animals and animals into 
men, we can metamorphose plants and alter their virtues, we 
can give minerals ideal properties—it is all a question of 
will-power. We can equally become visible or invisible, 
and herein is the explanation of the ring of Gyges and its 
mysteries. 

Let us first remove from the minds of our readers all absurd 
suppositions of effects destitute of causes or contradicting their 
causes. To become invisible, one of three things is necessary 
—either to interpose an opaque medium between the light 
and our body, or between our body and the eyes of the 
spectators; or we must fascinate the eyes of those present in 
such a manner that they cannot make use of their faculty of 
seeing. Now of these three methods of becoming invisible, 
the last alone is magical. Have we not noticed that, under the 
influence of a strong preoccupation, we may look without be¬ 
holding and knock up against an object which was actually 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


235 


before our eyes ? 1 “ Seeing, let them see not,” said the Great 
Initiator, whose history, moreover, tells us that one day, when 
on the point of being stoned in the Temple, he made himself 
invisible and went out. 

It is unnecessary to reproduce the mystifications of common 
grimoires on the ring of invisibility. Jamblichus and Peter 
d’Apono are the only authors who have treated the subject 
seriously. What they say is plainly allegorical, and those 
representations which they give of it, or those which can be 
reproduced after their descriptions, prove that they are 
indicating nothing else but the great magic Arcanum. One 
of these figures represents the cycle of universal harmonical 
movement equilibrated in imperishable being; another, which 
must be made from an amalgamation of the seven metals, 
deserves a detailed description. It should have a double 
collet and two precious stones, a topaz constellated at the 
sign of the sun, and an emerald at the sign of the moon. On 
the inner side it should bear the occult characters of the 
planets and on the outer their known signs, twice repeated 
and in kabbalistic opposition to one another, that is, five on 
the right and five on the left, the signs of the sun and moon 
resuming the four diverse intelligences of the seven planets. 
This configuration is nothing less than a pantacle expressing 
all the mysteries of magical dogma, and the symbolic sense 
of the ring is that, to exercise omnipotence, of which ocular 
fascination is one of the most difficult proofs that can be 
afforded, we must possess the whole science and know how to 
make use of it. 

Fascination is performed by magnetism. The Magus 
commands interiorly a whole assembly not to see him, and 
it does not see him. Thus he enters guarded doors and 
issues from prisons in the face of his stupefied jailers, who 
experience a kind of strange numbness and recollect having 
beheld him as in a dream, but only after he has passed. 
Thus the secret of invisibility consists wholly in a definable 
power, that of averting or paralyzing the attention, so that 
the light reaches the visual organ without exciting the seeing 
faculty of the soul. To exercise this power we must have a 


1 See Note 33. 


236 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


will habituated to sudden and energetic action, great presence 
of mind, and no less great skill in producing distractions 
among a crowd. For example, let a man who is hunted by 
assassins, after dashing into a cross street return at once, and 
come with collected mien before his pursuers, or let him mix 
with them and seem occupied in the same chase, and he will 
undoubtedly make himself invisible. He who wishes to be 
seen always makes himself conspicuous, and he who would 
remain unperceived obliterates himself and disappears. The 
true ring of Gyges is the will; it is also the rod of transmuta¬ 
tions, and by a clear and strong formulation it creates the 
magical Logos. The all-powerful words of enchantments are 
those which express this creative power over forms. The 
Tetragram, which is the supreme word of magic, means— 
It is what it will be—and applied with a plenitude of 
intelligence to any transformation whatsoever, it will renew 
and modify all things, in the face of evidence and common- 
sense. The hoc est of the Christian sacrifice is a translation 
and application of the Tetragram, and thus this simple phrase 
operates the most complete, invisible, incredible, and clearly- 
stated of all transformations. A still stronger word than 
transformation has been judged necessary by the councils to 
express the miracle, that of transubstaniiation. 

The Hebrew words, niHS HVIK, }DK, have been re¬ 

garded by all Kabbalists as the keys of magical transfor¬ 
mation. The Latin words, est, sit, esto, fiat, have the same 
virtue when pronounced with a complete comprehension. 
The Comte de Montalembert relates seriously, in his legend 
of St Elizabeth of Hungary, that one day this pious lady, 
surprised by her princely husband, from whom she wished to 
conceal her good works, at the moment when she was carrying 
some food to the poor in her apron, declared to him that she 
was carrying roses, and on examination she was not found to 
have spoken falsely, for the loaves had changed into roses. 
This story is a graceful magical apologue, and means that the 
truly wise man cannot lie; that the Logos of wisdom deter¬ 
mines the form of objects, or even their substance, inde¬ 
pendently of their forms. Why, for example, should not the 
noble spouse of St Elizabeth, a good and solid Christian 
like herself, who believed firmly in the real presence of the 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


2 37 


Saviour in true human body on an altar where he saw only a 
host of flour, why should he not believe in the real presence 
of roses under the form of loaves ? 1 Doubtless, she showed 
him bread, but as she had said, “ They are roses,” and he 
believed her incapable of the smallest untruth, he beheld, 
and wished only to behold, roses. This is the secret of the 
miracle. 

We must speak here of lycanthropy, or the nocturnal 
transformation of men into wolves, histories so well substanti¬ 
ated that sceptical science has had recourse to furious manias, 
and to masquerading as animals, for explanations. But such 
hypotheses are puerile, and explain nothing. Let us seek 
elsewhere the solution of the mystery, and establish—First, 
That no person has been killed by a were-wolf except by 
suffocation, without effusion of blood and without wounds. 
Second, that were-wolves, though tracked, hunted, and even 
maimed, have never been killed on the spot. Third, That 
persons suspected of these transformations have always been 
found at home, after the pursuit of the were-wolf, more or less 
wounded, sometimes dying, but invariably in their natural 
form. And rjow let us establish phenomena of another order. 
Nothing in the world is better attested, and more incontest¬ 
ably proved, than the real and visible presence of St Alphonsus 
de Ligouri by the bedside of the dying pope, whilst the same 
personage was seen at his own home, a great distance from 
Rome, transported in prayer and ecstasy. The simultaneous 
presence of the missionary Francis Xavier in several places at 
once has been no less rigorously evidenced. These may be 
said to be miracles, but real miracles are still objects for scien¬ 
tific investigation. The apparitions of those who are dear to 
us, coincident with the moment of their death, are phenomena 
of the same order, and referable to the same cause. 

We have spoken of the sidereal body, which is the mediator 
between the soul and the material organism. This body 
remains awake very often while the other is asleep, and by 
thought transports itself through all space which universal 
magnetism opens to it. It thus lengthens, without breaking, 
the sympathetic chain attaching it to the heart and brain, and 


1 See Note 34. 


238 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


this is why there is danger in waking up dreaming persons 
with a start, for a shock may sever the chain at a blow, and 
cause instantaneous death. The form of our sidereal body 
is conformable to the habitual condition of our thoughts; 
and, in the long run, it is bound to modify the features of the 
material organism. Let us now be bold enough to assert that 
the were-wolf is nothing more than the sidereal body of a 
man whose savage and sanguinary instincts are represented 
by the wolf, who, whilst his phantom is wandering abroad, 
sleeps painfully in his. bed, and dreams that he is a veritable 
wolf. What renders the were-wolf visible is the almost 
somnambulistic over-excitement caused by the fear of those 
who see it, or their disposition, more particularly among 
simple country-folk, to place themselves in direct communica¬ 
tion with the Astral Light, which is the common medium of 
dreams and visions. The blows inflicted on the were-wolf 
really wound the sleeper by the odic and sympathetic conges¬ 
tion of the Astral Light, and by the correspondence of the 
immaterial with the material body . 1 Many persons will 
believe themselves to be dreaming when they read of such 
things, and will ask us if we are really ourselves awake ; but 
we only beg scientific men to reflect on the phenomena of 
gestation, and the working of the imagination of women on 
the form of their offspring. A woman, having been present 
at the execution of a man who was broken on the wheel gave 
birth to a child, every one of whose limbs was broken. Let 
them explain how the impression produced on the soul of the 
mother could reach and break the infant’s members, and we 
will explain how blows dealt and received in dream can really 
bruise, and even grievously wound, the body of the person 
who receives them in imagination, above all when his body is 
in pain and subject to nervous and magnetic influences. 

We act by the imagination on the imagination of others, 
by our sidereal body on theirs, and by our organs on their 
organs, so that by sympathy, whether of inclination or of 
obsession, we possess one another, and are identified with 
those whom we would influence. Reactions against this 
empire make the most pronounced antipathy succeed the 


1 See Note 35. 


CEREMONIAL MAGIC 


2 39 


liveliest sympathy. The identification of existences is the 
aim of love, but in identifying them, it frequently makes them 
rivals and consequently enemies, if at the bottom of the two 
natures there be an unsociable disposition like pride; now, to 
saturate two united souls with an equal degree of pride is to 
disjoin them by making them rivals. 

The fatal ascendency of one person over another is the true 
rod of Circe. Almost every human countenance bears some 
resemblance to an animal, that is, it has the signature of a 
specialized instinct. Now, instincts are balanced by contrary 
instincts, and dominated by others which are stronger. To 
govern sheep, the dog evokes the fear of the wolf. If you are 
a dog and would be loved by a pretty little cat, be metamor¬ 
phosed into a cat and you will win her. But how is this 
change to be accomplished ? By observation, imitation, and 
imagination. We think that our figurative language will be 
understood here, and we commend this revelation to all 
magnetists as the most profound secret of their art. It may 
be formulated technically as follows : To polarize one's own 
animal light in equilibrated antagonism with an opposite pole. 
Or better still: To concentrate in one’s self absorbing 
specialities in order to direct radiations towards an absorbent 
reservoir, and vice versa. This regulation of our magnetic 
polarization may be performed by help of the animal forms 
we have mentioned, which will serve to fix imagination. For 
example, you seek to act magnetically on a person polarized 
like yourself, which you will know at first contact if you be a 
magnetist; they are merely a trifle less strong than yourself— 
they are a mouse, you a rat. Turn into a cat and you will 
catch them. 

When we dream of a living person, their sidereal body is 
either present to ours in the Astral Light, or at any rate the 
reflection of this body, and the way in which we are impressed 
by meeting it frequently reveals to us the secret dispositions 
of that person in our respect. Love, for example, fashions 
the sidereal body of the one to the image and resemblance of 
the other, so that the sensuous medium of the woman is like 
a man and that of the man is like a woman. It is this 
change which the kabbalists sought to express in a hidden 
way when they remark in explaining an obscure passage of 


240 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Genesis : “ God created love by placing a rib of Adam in the 
breast of Eve, and a portion of the flesh of Eve in the breast 
of Adam, so that the depth of the female heart is the bone 
of man, and the basis of the male heart is feminine flesh ”—an 
allegory which is certainly not devoid of profundity and beauty. 

The wand of Circe is the fascinating power of woman, 
and the companions of Ulysses transformed into swine are 
no mere history of the past. But no metamorphose is accom¬ 
plished without destruction. To change a hawk into a dove, 
it must first be killed, then cut in pieces, so as to annihilate 
the least vestige of its original form, and then boiled in the 
magic bath of Medea. Remark how the modern hierophants 
proceed to accomplish human regeneration; for example, 
what is done to transform a more or less weak and passionate 
man into a stoical Jesuit missionary, which is the great secret 
of this order, ever misconstrued, often calumniated, but 
invariably victorious. Read the “ Exercises of St Ignatius ” 
attentively, and mark with what magic power this man of 
genius operates the realization of faith. He counsels his 
disciples to see, touch, smell, and taste things invisible; he 
desires the senses to be exalted in prayer up to the point of 
voluntary hallucination. If you are meditating on an article 
of faith, St Ignatius would have you, in the first place, 
construct the locality, dream of it, see it, touch it. If it be 
hell, he gives you burning rocks to handle; he makes you 
float in darkness as thick as pitch; he places liquid sulphur 
on your tongue, he fills your nostrils with an abominable 
stench, he shows you frightful torments, and causes you to 
hear superhuman groans; he bids your will create all this by 
constant exercises. Each one does it after his own fashion, 
but always in the way most likely to impress him. It is no 
longer the intoxication of opium; it is a dream without sleep, 
a hallucination devoid of madness, a rational and voluntary 
vision, a veritable creation of intelligence and faith. Hence¬ 
forth, in his preaching, the Jesuit may truly say: “What we 
have seen with our eyes, what we have heard with our ears, 
what our hands have handled, that we declare unto you.” 
The Jesuit thus formed is in communication with a circle of 
wills exercised like his own; each of the fathers is as strong 
as the whole society, and the society is stronger than the world. 


PART VI 

THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 1 


I.—Divination. 

One of the privileges of the initiate of the Great Arcanum, 
and that which resumes them all, is Divination. According 
to the vulgar meaning of this word, to divine is to conjecture 
what we do not know, but its true significance is ineffable in 
its sublimity. To divine (divinare) is to exercise divinity. 
The Latin word divinus has another and higher meaning than 
divus , which is equivalent to the man-god. Devin (diviner), 
in French, contains the four letters of the word Dieu (God), 
plus the letter N, corresponding in shape to the Hebrew X 
aleph, which kabbalistically and hieroglyphically expresses 
the Great Arcanum, its symbol in the Tarot being the figure 
of the juggler. He who perfectly understands the absolute 
numerical value of N multiplied by N with the grammatical 
force of the N final in words expressing science, art, or power, 
who then adds the five letters of the word Devin in such a 
manner as to make five go into four, four into three, three 
into two, and two into one, by translating the resulting 
number into primitive Hebrew characters, will write the 
occult name of the Great Arcanum, and will be in possession 
of a word of which the sacred Tetragram itself is only the 
equivalent and image. 

To be a diviner in all the force of the term is, therefore, 
to be divine, and something still more mysterious. The two 
signs of human divinity or of divine humanity are prophecies 
and miracles. To be a prophet is to perceive beforehand the 


1 See Note 36. 

Q 


241 



242' 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


effects which exist in causes ; it is to read in the Astral Light: 
to perform miracles is to act on the universal agent and 
subject it to our will. The essence of divination, that is, of 
the Great Magic Arcanum, is represented by all the symbols 
of silence, and is closely bound up with the single and primi¬ 
tive dogma of Hermes. It gives absolute certitude in philo¬ 
sophy ; the secret of universal faith in religion; in physics, 
the composition, decomposition, recomposition, realization, 
and adaptation of the philosophical mercury, named Azoth 
by the alchemists; in dynamics, it multiplies our powers by 
those of the perpetual motion; it is at once mystical, meta¬ 
physical, and material, with correspondences of effects in the 
three worlds; it procures charity in God, truth in science, and 
gold in riches; for metallic transmutation is at once an 
allegory and reality, as is well known to all adepts of the true 
knowledge. 

Divination is intuition, and the key of intuition is the 
universal and magical dogma of analogies. By analogies the 
Magus interprets dreams, for the analogies in the reflections 
of the Astral Light are as rigorous as the shades of colours in 
the solar light, and can be calculated and explained with con¬ 
summate exactitude. The one indispensable condition is a 
knowledge of the dreamer’s degree of intellectual life, which 
he will reveal of himself by his own dreams in a way that will 
profoundly amaze him. 

Somnambulism, presentiments, and second sight are only 
an accidental or habitual disposition to dream in a voluntary 
or waking sleep, that is, to perceive the analogical reflections 
of the Astral Light, which is the great book of divination. 
There are two classes of seers, the instinctive and the initiated. 
This is why children, ignorant persons, shepherds, and even 
idiots, have more tendency to natural divination than scholars 
and thinkers. The simple herd-boy, David, was a prophet 
even as Solomon, the King of the Kabbalists and Magi. The 
perceptions of instinct are frequently as exact as those of 
knowledge. Those least clairvoyant in the Astral Light are 
those who reason most. Somnambulism is a purely instinctive 
state, and therefore somnambulists require to be guided by a 
seer of science; sceptics and reasoners merely lead them 
astray. Divinatory vision occurs only in ecstatic trance, and 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 


243 


to attain this state, doubt and illusion must be rendered 
impossible by enchaining or lulling thought. 

Divinatory instruments are merely means to self-magnetiza¬ 
tion and diversion from the exterior light in order to fix the 
attention on the inner light exclusively; they are a means of 
communication between diviner and consultant, and often 
serve alone to concentrate the two wills on one sign. Vague, 
complicated, variable figures assist in collecting the reflections 
of the Astral Light, and it is thus that we see visions in coffee- 
grouts, clouds, the white of-eggs, &c., those fatidic forms which 
only exist in the Translucid, or imagination of the operators. 
Vision in water is occasioned by dazzling and fatiguing the 
optic nerve, which transfers its natural functions to the Trans¬ 
lucid and produces a cerebral hallucination which mistakes the 
reflections of the Astral Light for real images; thus nervous 
persons, with weak sight and lively imagination, are best fitted 
for this kind of divination, which is more successful still when 
performed by children. But let us not misapprehend the 
function that we attribute to imagination in the divinatory 
arts. Doubtless we see by means of imagination, which is the 
natural side of the miraculous; but what we behold is true, 
and the marvellous side of this natural operation consists 
herein. We appeal to the experience of all veritable adepts. 
The author of this book has performed all kinds of divination, 
and the results he has obtained have been invariably in pro¬ 
portion to the exactitude of his scientific operations and the 
good faith of those whb consulted him. 

The magic mirror of Dupotet, like the mantle of Apollonius, 
is a method of concentrating the attention on the interior 
light. Vision in the thumb-nail, when very smooth and 
blackened, is a variety of the magic mirror; the colour black, 
like water, absorbs the visual rays, dazzlement and vertigo 
ensue, followed by lucidity in subjects naturally apt to it, or 
suitably disposed. Geomancy and cartomancy are other 
means of reaching the same ends; combinations of symbols 
and numbers, being at once fortuitous and necessary, present 
a sufficiently true likeness of the chances of destiny to enable 
imagination to behold the realities called up by such symbols. 
The more the interest is excited, the greater is the desire to 
see; the more complete is the confidence in intuition, and the 


244 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


clearer also is the vision. To cast the geomantic points by 
chance, or to tell fortunes by cards in a trifling manner, is to 
play like children. Chances are oracles only when magnetized 
by intelligence and directed by faith. 

Of all oracles the Tarot is the most astonishing in its 
results, because every possible combination of this universal 
key of the Kabbalah gives the oracles of science and truth 
as its solutions, on account of the analogical precision of 
its numbers and figures. This miraculous and unique book 
of the ancient Magi is an instrument of divination which 
may be employed with complete confidence; its information 
is always correct, at least in a certain sense, and when it 
predicts nothing it reveals hidden things, and gives the most 
sage advice to those who consult it. 

The more ceremonies we employ in the exercise of divina¬ 
tion, the more we excite the imagination of ourselves and 
our consultants. The conjuration of the four, the prayer of 
Solomon, the magic sword to drive away phantoms, may, 
therefore, be successfully used. The genius of the day and 
hour should be also invoked, and a special perfume offered 
to him; then we must place ourselves in magnetic and 
intuitive rapport with the consultant, by asking him what 
animal is sympathetic with him, which in antipathy, what 
is his favourite flower, which colour he prefers. Flowers, 
colours, and animals are connected in analogical classification 
with the seven genii of the Kabbalah. Those who love blue 
are idealists and dreamers ; those who like red are material¬ 
istic and passionate ; those who prefer yellow are fantastical 
and capricious; the lovers of green have frequently a 
mercantile or crafty character; those who give the preference 
to black are ruled by Saturn. Persons fond of horses are 
industrious and of noble character; the friends of dogs are 
affectionate and faithful, those of the cat independent and 
libertine. Frank persons have a horror of spiders; proud 
minds are antipathetic to the serpent. Upright and fastidious 
souls cannot tolerate rats and mice; the voluptuous hold 
toads in horror, because they are cold, solitary, hideous, 
and dreary. Flowers have analogous sympathies to those 
of animals and colours, and magic being the science of 
universal analogies, by one taste, one only tendency in any 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 


245 


person, all others may be divined. It is an application of 
the analogical anatomy of Cuvier to facts in the moral 
order. 

The physiognomy of the face and body, the lines on the 
forehead, the lines on the hand, also furnish invaluable 
indices to the Magus. Metoposcopy and chiromancy have 
become sciences in themselves, and the Chevalier d’Arpen- 
tigny has given the latter , a new degree of certitude by his 
remarks on the analogies which really exist between the 
characters of individuals and the general or detailed 
peculiarities of their hands. The consultant should be also 
interrogated on his habitual dreams, for these are the reflec¬ 
tions of both the outer and inner life. Great attention was 
paid to them by the ancients; they were looked on as certain 
revelations by the patriarchs, and most religious revelations 
have been given in dreams. The monsters of hell are 
Christianity’s nightmares ; never could brush or chisel have 
produced such deformities if they had not been beheld in 
dream. 

Temperament also is made known by dreams, and as the 
temperament exercises a continual influence on life, it is 
requisite to understand it well in order to conjecture the 
destiny of an individual with certitude. We should mistrust 
those whose imagination habitually reflects monstrosities. 
Dreams of blood, of enjoyment, and of light, are indices 
of a sanguine temperament; dreams of water, mud, rain, and 
tears, result from a more phlegmatic disposition; nocturnal 
sweats, darkness, terrors, phantoms, belong to the choleric 
and hypochondriac. 


II. —Astrology. 

Of all the arts derived from ancient Magian wisdom, 
astrology is in these days the most misunderstood. The 
universal harmony of Nature and the necessary connectiou 
between all effects and all causes are believed in no longer. 
True astrology, moreover, that which refers to the one and 
universal dogma of the Kabbalah, was profaned by the 
Greeks and Romans of the Decline; the doctrine of the 
seven firmaments and three mobilities issued of old from 


246 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


the decade of the ten Sephiroth; the character of the 
planets governed by angels, whose names have been changed 
into those of pagan divinities; the influence of the spheres 
on each other; the destiny inherent in numbers; the scale 
of proportion between the celestial hierarchies corresponding 
to those of humanity ; all have been materialized and reduced 
to superstition by the calculators of nativities and the casters 
of horoscopes in the Decadence and Middle Ages. To 
restore astrology to its primitive purity would be, in a certain 
sense, to create a new science; let us only attempt to indicate 
its first principles, with their more immediate and approxi¬ 
mate consequences. 

We have said that the Astral Light receives and preserves 
the imprints of things visible; it follows that the daily aspect 
of the heavens is reflected in this light, which, being the 
chief life-agent, operates, by a series of apparatuses naturally 
adapted to this end, the conception, gestation, and birth of 
children. Now, if this light be sufficiently prodigal of images 
to endow the fruit of pregnancy with the visible marks of the 
mother’s fancy or craving, much more should it transmit to 
the still mobile and unformed temperament of the newly-born 
child the atmospheric impressions and various influences 
which result at a given moment in the whole planetary system 
from such and such particular disposition of the stars. 

Nothing is indifferent in Nature; a pebble more or less on 
a road may crush or profoundly alter the fortunes of the 
greatest men, or even of the greatest empires; much more 
then the position of a particular star cannot be indifferent 
to the destinies of the child who is being born, and is 
entering by the fact of his birth into the universal harmony 
of the sidereal world. The stars are bound together by 
attractions which balance them and cause them to perform 
their revolutions with regularity in space; the network of 
light extends from sphere to sphere, and there is no point on 
any planet to which one of these indestructible threads is not 
attached. The precise place and moment of birth should 
therefore be calculated by the true astrological adept; then, 
after an exact computation of the starry influences, it remains 
for him to reckon the chances of condition, that is, the 
opportunities or obstacles which the child must one day 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 


247 


meet with in his state of life, in his relatives, in the disposi¬ 
tion he inherits, and, consequently, in his natural aptitude 
for the fulfilment of his destinies. Human liberty and 
enterprise must also be taken into account, should the child 
come to be truly a man and to extricate himself by a bold 
will from blind influences and the chain of fatality. It will 
be seen that we do not allow too much to astrology, but what 
we leave it is incontestable; it is the scientific and magical 
calculus of probabilities. 

Kabbalistic astrology must not be confounded with judicial 
astrology. We will explain this distinction. Infancy is 
dedicated to the Sun, childhood to the Moon, youth to Mars 
and Venus, the age of puberty to Mercury, mature age to 
Jupiter, old age to Saturn. Now, the whole of humanity 
lives under laws of development which are analogous to those 
of the individual. It is on this basis that Trithemius 
establishes his prophetic clavicula of the seven spirits, by 
means of which it is possible, following the analogical pro¬ 
portion of successive occurrences, to predict great future 
events with certainty, and fix beforehand, from age to age, 
the destinies of nations and the world. 

Astrology is as ancient as, and even more ancient than, 
astronomy, and all seers of clairvoyant antiquity have 
accorded to it the most complete confidence; now, what 
comes to us surrounded and supported by such imposing 
authorities should not be lightly condemned and rejected. 
Long and patient observations, decisive comparisons, ex¬ 
periments continually repeated, led the ancient sages to 
their conclusions, and those who pretend to refute them 
should begin the same labour in an inverse sense. Para¬ 
celsus was perhaps the last of the great practical astrologers; 
he healed the sick by talismans formed under astral in¬ 
fluences, and recognised in all bodies the mark of their 
ruling star; this was according to him the true universal 
medicine, the absolute natural science, lost by men through 
their own fault, and recovered by a small number of initiates 
only. To recognise the sign of each star on men, animals, 
and plants is the true natural science of Solomon, that 
science said to be lost, but its principles are preserved 
notwithstanding, like all such secrets, in the symbolism of the 


24S 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Kabbalah. It will be understood that to read the writing 
of the stars we must be acquainted with the stars themselves, 
a knowledge which must be obtained by the Kabbalistic 
domification of the Heavens, and by the comprehension of 
the Kabbalistic planisphere, recovered and explained by 
Gaffarel. In this planisphere, the constellations form 
Hebrew characters, and the mythological figures may be 
replaced by the Tarot figures. To this same planisphere 
Gaffarel refers the origin of patriarchal writing, and the 
first outlines of primitive alphabets might be discovered in 
the concatenations of starry attractions; the celestial book 
would thus have served as the model for that of Enoch, and 
the Kabbalistic alphabet would be the synthesis of heaven. 
This is not wanting in poetry, nor above all in probability, 
and the study of the Tarot, which is evidently the primitive 
and hieroglyphic book of Enoch, as was divined by the 
erudite William Postel, will be sufficient to convince us of 
this. 

The signs impressed in the Astral Light by the reflections 
and attractions of the stars are then reproduced, as the 
ancient sages discovered, on all bodies by the conjunction 
of this light. Men bear the seals of their planets on their 
foreheads, and especially on their hands; animals in their 
entire shapes and special peculiarities; plants reveal them 
on their leaves and in their seed; minerals in their veins, 
and in the peculiarities of their texture. The study of 
these characters was the occupation of the whole life of 
Paracelsus, and the figures on his talismans are the fruit of 
his researches; but he has given no key to them, and the 
astro-Kabbalistic alphabet, with its correspondences, still 
remains to be accomplished; the science of unconventional 
magical writing is confined, as regards publicity, to the 
planisphere of Gaffarel. The serious art of divination 
consists wholly in the knowledge of these signs. Chiro¬ 
mancy is the art of discerning in the lines of the hand the 
writing of the stars, and metoposcopy seeks the same or 
analogous characters in the countenances of its consultants. 
In reality, the lines formed on the human face by nervous 
contractions are determined by necessary laws, and the 
radiation of the nervous tissue is absolutely analogous to 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 


249 


the network formed between the spheres by the chains of 
stellar attractions. The fatalities of life are, therefore, 
necessarily written in our wrinkles, and one or more mystic 
letters of the Kabbalistic planisphere may often be recognised 
at first sight on the face of a stranger. If the letter be fretted 
and indented, there is an internal struggle between destiny 
and will, and already in his strongest emotions and tendencies 
his whole past is laid bare to the Magus; the future may 
then be easily conjectured, and if events deceive at times 
the sagacity of the diviner, the consultant remains none 
the less astonished at the superhuman knowledge of the adept. 

The head of man is shaped on the model of the starry 
spheres; it attracts and repels. Moreover, it is the head 
which is first formed and appears in the gestation of the 
infant. It is, therefore, affected in an absolute manner by 
the astral influence, and its diverse protuberances bear 
witness to the variety of its attractions. Phrenology, there¬ 
fore, should find its final message in scientific and purified 
astrology, the problems involved in which we indicate as 
objects for the patience and good faith of students. 

According to Ptolemseus, the sun dessicates, the moon 
moistens; according to the Kabbalists, the sun represents 
rigorous justice, and the moon is in sympathy with mercy. 
It is the sun which causes storms, and the moon which, by a 
kind of gentle atmospheric pressure, induces the sea to ebb, 
flow, and, as it were, to breathe. 

We read in the Zohar, one of the great sacred books of 
the Kabbalah, that “the magic serpent, son of the Sun, 
sought to devour the world, when the Sea, daughter of the 
Moon, set her foot on his head and subdued him.” For 
this reason, among the ancients, Venus was the daughter 
of the sea, as Diana was identified with the moon, and for 
this also the name of Mary signifies Star or Salt of the sea. 
To consecrate this Kabbalistic doctrine in the faith of the 
uninitiated, it is said in prophetic language, “The woman 
shall crush the serpent’s head.” 

Jerome Cardan , 1 one of the boldest speculators, and in¬ 
disputably the most accomplished astrologer of his day— 


1 See Note 37. 


2 5 0 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Jerome Cardan, who, if the legend of his death may be 
believed, was a martyr to his faith in astrology—has left a 
calculation by means of which everyone can forecast the 
good or evil fortune of every year in his life. He grounds 
his theory on his own experiences, and declares that this 
calculation has never deceived him. To know then what will 
be the destiny of any year, he collects the events of those 
which preceded it by four, eight, twelve, nineteen, and thirty; 
the number four is that of realisation; the number eight that 
of Venus, or natural things; the number twelve, which is that 
of the cycle of Jupiter, corresponds to successes; the cycles 
of the moon and Mars correspond to the number nineteen; 
thirty is that of Fatality, or Saturn. Thus, for example, I seek 
to ascertain what will befall me in this year 1855, an d I P ass 
over in my mind what really decisive events took place, in the 
order of life and progress, four years back ; what I experienced 
of either natural happiness or misfortune eight years ago; what 
I can recall in the way of success or failure twelve years back; 
the vicissitudes and misfortunes, or sicknesses, of nineteen 
years since; and what sad or calamitous occurrences I experi¬ 
enced at a distance of thirty years. Then, taking into account 
irrevocably accomplished facts and the progress of age, I 
calculate the chances analogous to those which I already owe 
to the influence of the same planets, and find that in 1851 I 
had moderately but sufficiently remunerative occupations, with 
some embarrassment in my position; that in 1847 I was 
violently separated from my family, and from this separation 
ensued great sufferings for mine and me; that in 1843 I 
travelled as a pioneer, addressing crowds, and was persecuted 
by ill-intentioned persons; in a word, I was at once honoured 
and proscribed; that, finally, in 1825 the family life ceased to 
exist for me, and I was definitely devoted to a fateful path, 
which led me to knowledge and misfortune. I may, therefore, 
expect that I shall this year undergo toil, poverty, weariness, 
banishment of the heart, change of place, notoriety, and con¬ 
tradictions, with some event which will be decisive for the 
rest of my days, and I already find in the present every reason 
to put faith in this future. I conclude that, for myself and 
for this year, experience completely confirms the accuracy of 
Cardan’s astrological prediction. 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 


2 5i 


This calculation, moreover, is connected with that of the 
climacteric years of the old astrologers. Climacteric means 
arranged in gradations, or calculated on the degrees of a 
scale. Johannes Trithemius, in his work on Secondary 
Deities, has very curiously computed the return of fortunate 
or disastrous years for all the empires of the world. 

According to the great master^ of astrology, comets are 
the stars of exceptional heroes, and only visit the earth to 
herald great changes therein; planets preside over collective 
existences, and modify the destinies of men in the aggregate; 
the fixed stars, the furthest and feeblest in their action, attract 
individuals and decide their tastes; sometimes a group of 
stars will influence, all together, the destinies of a single man, 
and often a large number of souls are drawn by the distant 
rays of the same sun. When we die, our interior light follows 
on the attraction of its star, and thus we live in other universes, 
wherein the soul creates for itself a new envelope analogous to 
the progress or decadence of its beauty, for our souls separated 
from our bodies resemble shooting stars; they are globules 
of animated light which always seek their centre to recover 
equilibrium and motion, but they must first of all disengage 
themselves from the serpent’s folds, that is, from the unpuri¬ 
fied Astral Light which surrounds and imprisons them, so 
long as their will-power cannot elevate them above it. The 
immersion of the living star in the dead light is a frightful 
torture; the soul at once freezes and burns therein, and has 
no other means of escape than by entering the current of 
exterior forms and taking a fleshly envelope, then energetically 
struggling against blind instincts to strengthen that moral 
liberty which will allow it, at the moment of death, to burst 
the chains of earth and take flight triumphantly towards its 
consoling star, the light of which has smiled upon it. 

Following this hint, the nature of hell-fire will be under¬ 
stood—it is identical with the demon or old serpent—and 
also in what the salvation or reprobation of men consists, all 
called and all in turn elected, but in a small number, after 
having been liable by their own act to fall into the eternal 
fire. Such is the grand and sublime revelation of the Magi, 
a revelation which is the mother of all symbolism, all 
doctrines, and all forms of worship. It will be understood 


252 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


already how far Dupuis was mistaken in believing religions 
to be issued from astronomy only. On the contrary, it is 
astronomy which is born of astrology, and primitive astrology 
is one of the branches of the holy Kabbalah, the science of 
sciences and the religion of religions. 

The ancients, comparing the calm and peaceful immensity 
of heaven, all peopled by ifnmutable lights, with the agitations 
and darkness of this world, believed themselves to have found 
in this beautiful gold-lettered book, the final message on the 
destinies of men; they traced in imagination lines of corres¬ 
pondence between those brilliant points of the divine writing, 
and the first constellations marked out by Chaldean shepherds 
are also said to have been the first characters of Kabbalistic 
writing. These characters, expressed originally by signs, then 
comprised in hieroglyphical figures, would, according to M. 
Moreau de Dammartin, author of a very singular treatise on 
the origin of alphabetical characters, determine the ancient 
Magi in the selection of the Tarot figures, which this scholar, 
like ourselves, recognises as essentially a hieratic and primitive 
book. Thus, in his opinion, the Chinese tseu, the Hebrew 
Aleph , and the Greek Alpha , expressed hieroglyphically by 
the figure of the Juggler, were borrowed from the constellation 
of the Crane, near the astral Fish of the eastern hemisphere. 
The Chinese tcheou, the Hebrew Beth, and the Latin B, 
represented by the Empress, are taken from the constellation 
of the Great Bear, &c. The Kabbalist Gaffarel erected a 
planisphere where all the constellations form Hebrew letters; 
but it is to be confessed that the configuration appears often 
more than arbitrary, and one is at a loss to understand why, 
on the indication of a single star, Gaffarel traces, for example, 
a Daleth rather than a Dzain; four stars again give a Thait 
as well as a He or an Aleph. 

Scholars, moreover, are not agreed on the shape of the 
letters of the primitive alphabet. The Italian Tarot, hav¬ 
ing Gothic originals, the recovery of which is much to be 
desired, corresponds in the arrangement of its figures to the 
Hebrew alphabet used since the captivity, and called the 
Assyrian; but fragments of anterior Tarots exist where the 
disposition is not the same. As nothing should be con¬ 
jectured in matters of research, we must wait for new 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 253 


and more convincing discoveries to determine our con¬ 
clusions. 

With regard to the alphabet of the stars, we consider it to 
be variable as the configuration of clouds, which seem to 
assume all the shapes that imagination can give them. It 
is the same with star groups as with points in geomancy, and 
with the card-medleys of modern fortune-telling. They are 
all pretexts for self-magnetization and instruments to fix and 
determine natural intuition. Thus, a Kabbalist used to 
mystical hieroglyphics will perceive signs in the stars which 
a shepherd will not find there; but, on his side, the shepherd 
will discern combinations which will escape the Kabbalist. 
Country folk recognise a rake in the belt and sword of Orion ; 
a Jewish Kabbalist would see in the same constellation, taken 
as a whole, all the mysteries of Ezekiel, the ten Sephiroth 
arranged triadwise, a central triangle composed of four stars, 
then a line of three stars, forming the jod , and the two figures 
united expressing all the mysteries of Bereschit; then four 
stars, making the wheels of Mercavah, and completing the 
divine chariot. Looking at it in another way, he would find 
a well-formed ghimel placed above a jod within a large daleth 
upside down, a figure representing the conflict between good 
and evil, with the final triumph of good. In reality, ghimel 
superposed on jod is the triad emanating from unity, the 
divine manifestation of the Word, whilst the inverted daleth 
is the triad composed of the maleficent duad multiplied by 
itself. The constellation of Orion thus considered would be 
identical with the figure of St Michael doing battle with the 
dragon, and the appearance of this sign under this form would 
be for the Kabbalist an omen of victory and happiness. 

The imagination is exalted by a long contemplation of the 
sky, and then the stars respond to our thoughts. Lines traced 
mentally from one to the other by the first observers must 
have supplied men with the earliest notions of geometry. 
Accordingly as the soul is disturbed or placid, the stars seem 
scintillating with menaces or sparkling with hope. Heaven 
is thus the mirror of the human soul, and when we think that 
we are reading the stars it is in ourselves we read. 

Gaffarel, 1 applying the presages of celestial writing to the 

1 See Note 38. 


254 


THE MYSTERIES OE MAGIC 


destinies of empires, declares that the ancients did not vainly 
represent all signs of evil augury as situated in the northern 
division of the sky, for in every time calamities have been 
looked on as coming from the north to spread abroad over 
the earth by the invasion of the south. For this reason, he 
says, “ the ancients have pictured in the boreal sky a serpent 
or dragon, near two bears, since those animals are the true 
symbols of tyranny, pillage, and oppression of all kinds. 
And, as a fact, go over the annals, and you will see that all 
the great desolations which have ever taken place came from 
the north. The Assyrians or Chaldeans, incited by Nebu¬ 
chadnezzar and Salmanasar, sufficiently proved this truth by 
the conflagration of the most sumptuous and sacred town and 
Temple in the universe, and by the entire destruction of a 
people whom God Himself had taken under His particular 
protection, and of whom He called Himself specially the 
Father. And that other Jerusalem, Rome the blessed, has 
it not often experienced the fury of the evil northern race, 
when, by the cruelty of Alaric, Genseric, Attila, and other 
princes of the Goths, Huns, Vandals, &c., she has beheld her 
altars overthrown, and the towers of her superb buildings 
made level with the railings ? . . . . Most fittingly, therefore, 
in the secrets of this celestial writing do we read miseries and 
misfortunes on the northern side, since a septentrionepandetur 
omne malum. Now, the word which we translate pandetur 
means equally depingetur and scribetur , and the prophecy 
equally signifies—All the miseries of the world are written in 
the northern side of the sky.” 

We have transcribed the whole of this passage because it is 
not without significance for our own time, when the north is 
again menacing Europe, but it is also the fate of Boreal frosts 
to be overcome by the sun, and darkness dissipates itself 
before the light. Such is our final prophetic message and the 
secret of the future. 

The following is the table of magical characters traced by 
the old astrologers on the model of the zodiacal constella¬ 
tions ; each of these characters represents the name of a good 
or evil genius. It is well known that the signs of the Zodiac 
are connected with various celestial influences, and conse¬ 
quently express an annual alternative of good or evil 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 


2 55 


X 


v> 


^ +H+V Q\z 
— i| j£4y 


^.5.3^ 




-o 






The names of the genii signified by the above characters 
are:— 

For Aries. Sataaran and Sarahiel. 

For Taurus, Bagdal and Araziel. 

For Gemini, Sagras and Saraiel. 

For Cancer, Rahdar and Phakiel. 

For Leo, Sagham and Sera tie/. 

For Virgo, Iadara and Schaltiel. 

For Libra, Grasgarben and Hadakiel. 

For Scorpio, Riehol and Saissaiel. 

For Sagittarius, Vhnori and Saritaiel. 

For Capricornus, Sagdalon and Semakiel. 

For Aquarius, Archer and Ssakmakiel. 

For Pisces, Rasamasa and Vacabiel. 


The sage who seeks to read the heavens must observe also 




256 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


the doings of the moon, which has a very strong influence in 
astrology. The moon successively attracts and repels the 
magnetic fluid of the earth, and thus the ebb and flow of the 
sea are produced; we must, therefore, well understand its 
phases and be able to discern its days and hours. The new 
moon is favourable to the commencement of all magical 
works ; from the first quarter to the full moon its influence is 
warm ; from the full moon to the last quarter it is dry ; from 
the last quarter to the end it is cold. 

We give as follows the special characteristics of each of the 
moon’s days, with the twenty-two keys of the Tarot and the 
seven planetary signs :— 

1. The Juggler or Magus. 

The first day of the moon is that of the creation of the 
moon itself. This day is consecrated to mental enterprises, 
and should be propitious to well-timed innovations. 

2. The Female Pope, or Occult Science. 

The second day, the genius of which is Enediel, was the 
fifth of creation, for the moon was made on the fourth day. 
The birds and fishes are living hieroglyphics of magical 
analogies and of the universal dogma of Hermes. The water 
and the air, which were then filled with the forms of the 
Word, are elementary figures of the Mercury of the sages, 
that is, of intelligence and speech. This day is favourable 
to revelations, initiations, and the great discoveries of science. 

3. The Celestial Mother, or Empress. 

The third day was that of man’s creation. So the moon 
in the Kabbalah is called the Mother when it is represented 
as accompanied by the number three. This day is favourable 
to generation, and generally to all productions, whether 
physical or mental. 

4. The Emperor, or Ruler. 

The fourth day is unlucky; it was that of the birth of 
Cain; but it is favourable to unjust and tyrannical under¬ 
takings. 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 


257 


5. The Pope, or Hierophant. 

The fifth day is fortunate; it was that of the birth of Abel. 

6. The Lover, or Liberty. 

The sixth day is one of pride; it was that of the birth of 
Lamech, who said to his wives: “ I have slain a man to my 
own hurt, and a stripling to my own bruising. Sevenfold 
vengeance shall be taken for Cain, but for Lamech seventy 
times sevenfold.” This day is propitious to conspiracies and 
revolts. 

7. The Chariot. 

The seventh day was that of the birth of Hebron, who gave 
his name to the first of the holy cities of Israel. A day of 
religion, prayers, and success. 

8 . Justice. 

Murder of Abel. A day of expiation. 

9. The Ancient, or Hermit. 

Birth of Methusaleh. Day of blessing for children. 

10. Ezekiels Wheel of Fortune. 

Birth of Nebuchadnezzar. Dominion of the animal. 
Fatal day. 

n. Strength. 

Birth of Noah. Visions on this day are deceiving, but it is 
one of health and longevity to children born on it. 

12. The Sacrifice. 

Birth of Samuel. Prophetic and Kabbalistic day, favour¬ 
able to the accomplishment of the magnum opus. 

13. Death. 

Day of Canaan’s birth. An unlucky day and fatal 
number. 


258 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


14. Angel of Temperance. 

Benediction of Noah. The angel Cassiel of the hierarchy 
of Uriel governs this day. 

15. Typhon, or the Devil. 

Birth of Ishmael. Day of exile and reprobation. 

16. The Blasted Tower. 

Day of the birth of Jacob and of Esau, and of the pre¬ 
destination of Jacob to Esau’s ruin. 

17. The Shooting Star. 

Fire from heaven burns Sodom and Gomorrah. Day of 
salvation for the good and destruction to the wicked ; 
dangerous if it fall on a Saturday. It is under the dominion 
of Scorpio. 

18. The Moon. 

Birth of Isaac; wife’s triumph. Day of conjugal affection 
and virtuous hope. 

19. The Sun. 

Birth of Pharaoh. A beneficent or unfortunate day for 
the great ones of the world, according to the different merits 
of the great. 

20. The Judgment. 

Birth of Jonah, the instrument of God’s judgments. A day 
propitious to divine revelations. 


21. The World. 

Birth of Saul, earthly royalty. Danger to mind and 
reason. 


22. Influence of Saturn. 
Birth of Job. A day of trial and sorrow. 


23. Influence of Ve?ius. 

Birth of Benjamin, A day of preference and tenderness. 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 


2 59 


24. Injlue 7 ice offupiter. 

Birth of Japhet. 

25. Influence of Mercury. 

Tenth Plague of Egypt. 

26. Influence of Mars. 

Deliverance of the Israelites and passage of the Red Sea. 

27. Influence of Diana, or Hecate. 

Splendid Victory gained by Judas Maccabeus. 

28. Influence of the Sun. 

Samson carries away the gates of Gaza. Day of strength 
and rescue. 

29. The Fool of the Tarot. 

Day of miscarriage and failure* in all things. 

By means of this rabbinical table, which Jean Belot and 
others have borrowed from the Hebrew Kabbalists, it will be 
seen that the old masters concluded ct posteriori from facts to 
presumable influences, which is completely within the logic of 
the secret sciences. It will be seen also how many various 
meanings are included in the twenty-two Keys which form the 
universal alphabet of the Tarot, and the truth of our assertions 
will be supported when we claim that all the secrets of the 
Kabbalah and magic, all the mysteries of the ancient world, 
all the science of the patriarchs, all historical traditions of 
primeval times, are comprised in this hieroglyphical book of 
Thoth, Enoch, or Cadmus. 

A very simple method of finding celestial horoscopes by 
onomancy is that which we are about to describe; it reconciles 
Gaffarel with ourselves, and gives results which are most 
astonishing in their accuracy and depth. Take a blank card, 
wherein you must cut the name of the person for whom you 
are consulting; place this card at the end of a tube, which 
diminishes on the side of the observer’s eye and increases 
towards that of the card ; then look through it at the four 


260 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


cardinal points alternately, beginning at the east and ending 
at the north. Take note of all the stars you see through 
the letters ; then convert the letters into numbers, and with 
the sum of the addition similarly written down, renew the 
operation; count how many stars you have; then, adding 
this number to that of the name, you again cast up, and 
write the total of the two numbers in Hebrew characters. 
Renew the operation, and set down separately the stars you 
have met with; seek next in the celestial planisphere the 
names of all the stars; classify them according to size and 
brilliancy, choosing the largest and most brilliant as the polar- 
star of your astrological operation. Find, lastly, on the 
Egyptian planisphere (a sufficiently complete copy may be 
seen in the atlas to Dupuis’ larger work) the names and figures 
of the genii to whom the stars belong, and you will then know 
what fortunate or unfortunate signs enter into the name of the 
person, what their influence will be, whether in infancy 
(which is the name traced at the east), in youth (the name 
traced at the south), in maturity (the name traced at the west), 
or in old age (for which the name is traced at the north), 
or, finally, in the whole life (to which belong the stars 
entering into the entire number formed by the addition of the 
letters and stars). This operation is plain, easy, and requires 
few calculations; it carries us back to the furthest antiquity, 
and evidently belongs to the primeval magic of the patriarchs, 
of which we may be convinced by studying the works of 
Gaffarel and his master, Rabbi Chomer. 

This onomantic astrology was that of all the ancient Hebrew 
Kabbalists, as is proved by the observations preserved by 
Rabbi Chomer, Rabbi Kapol, Rabbi Abjudan, and other 
masters. The menaces of the prophets against various 
empires of the world were based on the characters of the 
stars found vertically above them in the uniform correspond¬ 
ence between the celestial and terrestrial spheres. Thus, by 
inscribing in the sky of Greece its Hebrew name, and render¬ 
ing that into numbers, they found the word Charab, of which 
the sum is twelve, and it signifies “destroyed, desolated.” 
They concluded that after a cycle of twelve periods Greece 
would be desolated and destroyed. 

Shortly before the conflagration and overthrow of Jerusalem 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 261 


by Nabuzardan, the Kabbalists noticed eleven stars arranged 
vertically above the Temple after this fashion— 

******** 

* 

* * 

and they all entered into the word Hibschich , written from 
north to south, which signifies reprobation and abandonment 
without mercy. The Sum of the numbers of the letters is 423, 
precisely that of the duration of the Temple. 

The empires of Persia and Assyria were threatened with 
destruction by four vertical stars which entered into the 
letters of the word Rob, and the fatal number indicated by 
these letters was 208 years. Four stars also foretold to the 
Kabbalistic rabbins of that time the fall and dismemberment 
of the empire of Alexandria, by their entering into the word 
par ad, to divide, its number, 284, indicating the entire period 
of that kingdom, both in its root and branches. 

According to Rabbi Chomer, the destinies of the Ottoman 
power at Constantinople were fixed and announced before¬ 
hand by four stars, which, arranged in the word caah, signify 
to be feeble, sick, and drawing to its end. The stars being 
more brilliant in the letter aleph gave that letter the value of 
one thousand. The three letters united make 1025, which must 
be reckoned from the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet 
II., a computation which promises still some centuries of exist¬ 
ence to the enfeebled empire of the Sultans. 

The Mane Thecel Phares, which Belshazzar, in his intoxi¬ 
cation, beheld written on the wall of his palace by the flicker 
of the torches, was an onomantic intuition of the same kind 
as the rabbins. Belshazzar, doubtless initiated by his Hebrew 
diviners into the reading of the heavens, mechanically and 
instinctively operated on the lamps of his festival, as he might 
have done on the stars of the sky. The three words which 
he formed in his imagination became soon ineffaceable in his 
eyes, and eclipsed all the glare of his banquet. It was not 
difficult to predict to a king who surrendered himself to orgies 
in a besieged town an end like that of Sardanapalus. We 
have said, and we repeat, in concluding this chapter, that 
magnetic intuitions alone give value and reality to all 


262 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Kabbalistical and astrological calculations, puerile, possibly, 
and completely arbitrary, if made without inspiration, by cold 
curiosity, and without a powerful will. 

III.— The Book of Hermes or of Thoth. 

Among the sacred books of the Christians are two works 
which the infallible Church .never ventures to explain, and 
does not pretend to understand—the prophecy of Ezekiel, 
and the Apocalypse—two Kabbalistic claviculae, doubtless 
reserved by heaven for the commentaries of magian kings,* 
books which for faithful believers are sealed with seven seals, 
yet are perfectly clear to the infidel who is an initiate of the 
occult sciences. 

There exists also another book, but this, though in a 
certain sense it is popular and found everywhere, is of all the 
most hidden and unknown, because it is the key of all the 
rest ; it is in circulation without being known by the public ; 
where it is, no one expects to discover it, and should anyone 
divine its existence, he would a thousand times over vainly 
waste his time if he sought it under any but one form. This 
book, more ancient perhaps than that of Enoch, has never 
been translated, and it exists only in primitive characters, 
on single leaves, like the tablets of antiquity. A distinguished 
scholar has revealed, though no one appears to have noticed 
it, not exactly its secret but its antiquity and extraordinary 
preservation: another scholar, though of a genius more 
fantastic than judicious, passed thirty years in the study of 
this book, and has barely divined its importance. It is, in 
truth, a monumental and phenomenal work, strong and 
simple as the architecture of the Pyramids, and durable, 
therefore, as are those ; a book which epitomizes all sciences, 
while its infinite combinations can solve all problems ; a book 
which speaks by evoking thought, the inspirer and controller 
of all possible conceptions, the masterpiece perhaps of the 
human mind, and undoubtedly one of the finest things which 
antiquity has bequeathed to us, a universal clavicula , the 
name of which was understood and explained by the learned 
illumine , William Postel; a unique text, of which the first 
characters alone ravished into ecstasy the devotional spirit of 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 263 


Saint Martin, and might have restored reason to the sublime 
and unfortunate Swedenborg. 

The universal key of magical arts is the key of all ancient 
religious dogmas, the key of the Kabbalah and the Bible, the 
primitive source of divine and human tradition, the clavicula 
of Solomon, Now, this clavicula or little key, looked on as 
lost for centuries, has been recovered by us, and we have 
been enabled to open the sepulchres of the elder world, to 
make the dead speak, to behold the monuments of the past 
in all their splendour, to understand all the enigmas of the 
past, and penetrate into every sanctuary. The use of this key 
was, among the ancients, permitted only to the high priests, 
and its secret was confided to the flower of the initiates alone. 
This key consisted of a hieroglyphical and numeral alphabet, 
giving expression to a series of universal and absolute ideas 
by means of characters and numbers; then came a scale of 
ten numbers multiplied by four symbols and bound together 
by twelve figures, representing the twelve signs of the zodiac, 
plus four genii, those of the four cardinal points. 

The symbolic tetrad, represented in. the mysteries of 
Memphis and Thebes by the four forms of the sphinx, the 
man, the eagle, the bull, and the lion, corresponded with the 
four elements of the old world—water being signified by the 
chalice which the man or aquarius holds; air by the circle 
or nimbus which surrounds the head of the celestial eagle; 
fire by the wood which feeds it, by the tree which the heat of 
the sun and' earth fructifies, and lastly by the sceptre of 
royalty, of which the lion is the emblem; earth by the sword 
of Mithra, who annually immolates the sacred bull and pours 
out with its blood the sap which swells in all the fruits of the 
earth. 

Now, these four signs, with their analogies, are the explana¬ 
tion of the one word hidden in every sanctuary, of that word 
which the bacchantes seemed to divine, when, during the 
celebration of the feasts of Iacchos, they were exalted into 
delirium for the glory of Io Evohe ! What then was meant 
by this mysterious word ? It was the name of the four 
primitive letters of the mother tongue : the Jod, symbol of 
the vine-stock or paternal sceptre of Noah; the He, symbol 
of the chalice of libations ; the Vau, which joins the preceding 


264 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


signs, and was represented in India by the great and mysteri¬ 
ous lingam. Such, in the divine word, was the three-fold 
sign of the triad; then the maternal letter appeared a second 
time to express the fecundity of nature and woman, to 
formulate also the dogma of universal and progressive 
analogies, descending from causes to effects and remounting 
from effects to causes. The sacred word, moreover, was not 
pronounced; it was spelt and read off in four words, which 
are the four sacred words : Jod He Vau He. 

In the sixteenth century, a man of exalted faith and wide 
erudition had discovered the key of all religious mysteries, 
and published a small work: Clavis Absconditorum a Con- 
stitutione Mundi, “ The Key of Things kept Secret from the 
Foundation of the World.” This man was an illuminated 
Hebraist and Kabbalist, named William Postel. 1 He believed 
that he had found the true signification of the Tetragram in a 
hieroglyphic book anterior to the Bible, and termed by him 
the Genesis of Enoch, doubtless to conceal its real name 
from the uninitiated ; for on the ring of his symbolic key, the 
representation of which he gives as an occult explanation of 
his singular work, he thus traces his mysterious tetrad :— 

T 


O 


> 


forming in this manner a word which, read from left to right, 
beginning at the bottom, makes Rota, by beginning at the 
top, makes Taro, and even Tarot, if the initial letter be 
repeated to mark the circle more distinctly, and read from 

1 He was born in the Diocese of Avranches and was so precocious that 
he was made maitre d'dcole at the age of fourteen. He visited the far 
East, and died in 1581, being ninety-six years old. He was persuaded 
that the King of France was destined to universal monarchy as the lineal 
descendant of Noah’s eldest son. 




. THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 265 

right to left, as Hebrew should be read, makes Tora, the 
sacramental name which the Jews give to their sacred book. 

Let us compare with this enigma of Postel the erudite 
observations made by Court de Gebelin, in the sixth volume 
of his Monde Primitif^ concerning a book of the ancient 
Egyptians, which has come down to our own times under the 
futile pretext of a game of cards : let us examine the mysteri¬ 
ous figures of these cards, of which the first twenty-two are 
evidently a hieroglyphic alphabet, where symbols are explained 
by numbers, while the entire game is divided into four tens, 
each accompanied by four figures with four colours and four 
different symbols, and we shall have the right to ask if the 
Tarot of the Bohemians be not the Genesis of Enoch, the 
Taro, Rota, or Tora of William Postel, and his initiates the 
true Hebrew Kabbalists! If in this state of doubt we 
penetrate the learned obscurities of the Zohar, the great 
sacred book of the supreme Kabbalah, our conjectures will 
soon change into certitude when we learn that the Jod, the 
tenth and principal letter of the Hebrew alphabet, has been 
always regarded by initiated Kabbalists as the sign of the 
First Cause, represented by the Egyptian phallus and by the 
rod of Moses ; that the He, the second letter of the name of 
rvi,T and the fifth of the alphabet, signifies the passive and 
demonstrative form of the active principle, and corresponds 
to the cteis of ancient sacred hieroglyphs; that the Vau, the 
third letter of the Tetragram, and the sixth of the alphabet, 
signifies crook, entanglement, attraction, and corresponds to 
the hieroglyphic signs of the cross, the sword, and the 
lingam, as we have before said; finally, that the He, 
repeated at the end of the Tetragram, possibly represented 
the circle which would result from the superposition of two 
cups, one upright, the other inverted. We have then the key 
of the denary symbols of the Tarot, the first of which 
represents a blossoming rod, the second a royal chalice, the 
third a sword piercing a crown, and the fourth a circle 
enclosing a lotos flower. 

It remains for us, in order to be fully initiated into the 
mysteries of the Genesis of Postel, to thoroughly understand 
the series of absolute theological and philosophical ideas which 
the ancients attached to the ten first numbers. Here Pytha- 


266 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


goras is in agreement with the depositaries of the secret of 
Moses, for they have all drawn from the same fountain; and 
we have seen that in the tetrad the secret signs of the supreme 
Kabbalah express precisely the same doctrine as the hiero¬ 
glyphs of Egypt and the sacred symbols of India. The 
phallus, the cteis, the lingam of life, the sceptre of Osiris, the 
cup or flower of Isis, the lingam of Horus and the cycle of 
Hermes, Aaron’s blossoming rod, the patera which contains 
the manna, the sacrificial sword and the dish for offerings, the 
pontifical staff, the eucharistic chalice, the Cross and the 
Divine Host, all religious signs, correspond to the four hiero¬ 
glyphic symbols of the Tarot, which are the hieratic explanation 
of the four letters of the great and Divine Tetragram. 

What most attracted the attention of Court de Gebelin 
when he discovered the Tarot, were the hieroglyphs of the 
twenty-first card, entitled the World. This card, which is no 
other than the identical key of William Postel, represents 
Truth naked and victorious in the centre of a crown which is 
divided into four parts by four lotus flowers. At the four 
corners of the card are seen the four emblematic animals which 
are the analysis of the sphinx, which St John borrowed from 
the prophet Ezekiel, as Ezekiel himself had borrowed them 
from the bucephalous or other sphinxes of Egypt and Assyria. 
These four figures, which a tradition, incomprehensible to the 
Church herself, still gives as the attributes of our four evangel¬ 
ists, represent the four elementary forms of the Kabbalah, the 
four seasons, the four metals, and lastly the four mysterious 
letters of the Jewish Tora, of Ezekiel’s wheel, Rota, and of 
the Tarot which, according to Postel, is the key of things 
hidden from the beginning of the world. It must be also 
remarked that the word Tarot is composed of the sacred letters 
of the monogram of Constantine—a Greek P crossed by a 
T between the Alpha and the Omega, which signify the begin¬ 
ning and the end. Disposed in this manner, it is a word 
analogous to the Inri of the Freemasons, wherein the two I’s 
express equally the beginning and the end, since in the 
Kabbalah the Iod and all its derivations are symbolic of the 
phallus and of creation; the beginning and the end, expressed 
thus by the same letter, give the notion of the eternal evolu¬ 
tion of the divine cycle, and therein the Inri is more pro- 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 267 

found, and belongs to a higher grade of initiation than the 
Tarot. 

If we compare the hieroglyphic form of the Cross in the 
primitive Church with these discoveries, we shall be struck 
by many additional analogies. The first Christians usually 
composed the Cross from the four segments of the circle. 
I have seen one with ten branches issuing from one another, 
and four rivers at its root; a copy may be found in the 
Latin work of Bosius on the triumph of the Cross. The 
first crosses were without Christ, and sometimes bore a 
dove with the inscription, Inri, to suggest that there is a 
concealed sense in this inscription, and that it is the province 
of the Holy Spirit to make us understand it. The four Kab- 
balistic animals are also frequently found at the four arms 
of the Cross, which thus becomes a philosophical emblem of 
the tetrad. 

Those who doubt what we advance here may consult the 
Gnostic yet orthodox writings attributed to St Dionysius the 
Areopagite, and those of St Irenseus, Synesius, and Clement 
of Alexandria. But without leaving the canon of the New 
Testament, they will find in the Apocalypse an ample magical 
and kabbalistical clavicula, which appears to have been devised 
according to the numbers, symbols, and hieroglyphic figures 
of the Tarot. There, in fact, we find the sceptres, chalices, 
swords, and crowns, disposed by determined numbers and 
corresponding to each other by means of the denary and 
sacred septenary ; there we find the four kings of the four 
quarters of the world, and the four horsemen which figure in 
our ordinary cards ; we find the winged woman, and the Logos 
in kingly garments, afterwards in pontifical costume with 
several diadems on His tiara. Finally, the Apocalyptic key, 
which is the vision of Heaven, is identical with the number 
twenty-one of the Tarot, and reveals to us a throne surrounded 
by a double rainbow, and at the four corners of this crown the 
four sacramental animals of the Kabbalah. These coinci¬ 
dences are, at least, very curious, and afford much food for 
thought. 

Enraptured by his discovery, Postel naively imagined that 
he possessed the bond of universal religious concord, and the 
future tranquillity of the world. It was at this period that he 


268 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


wrote his Traite de la Concord Universelle , his book on the 
Raisons d'etre da Saint Esprit , and that he dedicated to the 
fathers of the Council of Trent, then assembled, the Clavis 
absconditorum a constitution Mundi. The epistle he addresses 
them is curious :—he poses frankly as a prophet, and declares to 
the bishops and doctors that their anathemas are unseasonable, 
since all men must ultimately be saved, this being the conse¬ 
quence he draws from the unity and perpetuity of analogical 
and rational revelation in the world. 

The fathers of the council did not even do him the honour 
of chastising him. His book and letter were looked on as the 
productions of a madman and remained unanswered; but 
a little later on, having advanced some propositions on the 
redemption of the human race which appeared to be heterodox, 
he was shut up in a monastery, wherein he died in the convic¬ 
tion that he should rise again to explain to men his great 
discovery of the keys of the occult world and the mysteries of 
the Tetragram ; for it seemed to him impossible that such a 
revelation could be wholly lost to posterity. 

The erudite Gaffarel had no doubt that the Theraphim of 
the Hebrews, by means of which they consulted the Urim and 
Thummim, were the figures of the four Kabbalistic animals, 
the symbols of which were summarized, as we shall presently 
show, by the sphinxes or cherubim of the Ark. But he cites 
in connection with the usurped Theraphim of Michas, a curious 
passage of Philo, which is an entire revelation on the ancient 
and sacerdotal origin of our Tarots. Gaffarel expresses him¬ 
self as follows : “ He (Philo the Jew) says, speaking of the 
history concealed in the before-mentioned chapter of Judges, 
that Michas made of fine gold and silver three figures of young 
boys and three young calves, in addition to a lion, an eagle, a 
dragon, and a dove, in such a manner that if any one sought 
him to learn a secret concerning his wife, he interrogated by 
the dove; if touching his children, by the young boy ; if for 
wealth, by the eagle ; if for power or authority, by the lion ; if 
for fecundity, by the cherub or calf; if for length of days, by 
the dragon.” This revelation of Philo, though treated lightly 
by Gaffarel, is of palmary importance to us. Here, in fact, we 
have the key of the tetrad, the figures of the four symbolic 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 269 

animals in the twenty-first key of the Tarot, or the third 
septenary, thus repeating and epitomizing all the symbolism 
expressed by the three superposed septenaries; next the 
antagonism of colours signified by the dove and the dragon ; 
then the circle or Rota, formed by the dragon or serpent to 
express longevity; finally, the Kabbalistic divination of the 
complete Tarot, as it was afterwards practised by the 
Egyptian Bohemians, whose secrets were imperfectly divined 
and recovered by Etteilla. 

We find in the Bible that the high priests consulted the 
Lord on the golden table of the holy Ark, between the 
cherubim, or bull-head and eagle-winged sphinxes, and that 
they consulted by means of the Theraphim, by the Urim, tfie 
Thummim, and the Ephod. The Ephod, as we know, was a 
magic square of twelve numbers and twelve words graven on 
precious stones. The word Theraphim in Hebrew means 
hieroglyphs or symbolical signs; the Urim and Thummim 
were the above and below, the east and west, the yea and 
nay, and these signs corresponded to the two columns of the 
Temple, Jakin and Bohas. When, therefore, the high priest 
wished to elicit an oracle, he drew by lot the Theraphim, or 
golden plates which bore the images of the four sacred words, 
and placed them in threes round the breastplate or Ephod, 
between the Urim and Thummim, that is, between the two 
onyxes which served as the clasps to the chains of the Ephod. 
The right onyx signified Gedulah, or mercy and magnificence, 
the left corresponded to Geburah, and signified justice and 
wrath ; and if, for example, the sign of the lion was found 
near the stone where the name of the tribe of Judah was 
engraved, on the left side, the high priest would interpret 
the oracle thus: “ The rod of the Lord is provoked against 
Judah.” If the Theraphim represented the man, or the 
chalice, and were also found on the left, near the stone of Ben¬ 
jamin, the high priest would read : “ The mercy of the Lord 
is wearied by the offences of Benjamin, which outrage Him 
in His love. For this reason will He pour forth on him 
the chalice of His indignation, &c.” When the sovereign 
priesthood ceased in Israel; when all the oracles of the 
world were silenced in the presence of the Word made 
flesh and speaking by the mouth of the most popular and 


270 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


the mildest of sages; when the ark was lost, the sanc¬ 
tuary profaned, and the Temple destroyed, the mysteries 
of the Ephod and the Theraphim, no longer traced on 
gold and precious stones, were written, or rather drawn, 
by some erudite Kabbalists on ivory, on parchment, on 
silvered or gilt copper, then, lastly, on simple cards, which 
were always suspected by the official Church as containing a 
dangerous key to her mysteries. Thence have come those 
Tarots the antiquity of which, revealed to the learned Court 
de Gebelin by the science of numbers and hieroglyphics itself, 
so much exercised at a later period the questionable per¬ 
spicacity but persevering investigation of Etteilla. 

Etteilla or Alliette, an illumine hair-dresser, exclusively 
engrossed by his divinatory system, and the emolument he 
could derive from it, neither proficient in his own language nor 
even in orthography, pretended to reform, and thus attribute 
to himself, the Book of Thoth. On the Tarot which he 
published, which has become very scarce, we find the follow T - 
ing naive advertisement: “ Etteilla, professor of Algebra, 
reformer of Cartomancy, and correctors (sic) of the modern 
inaccuracies of the ancient Book of Thoth, lives in the Rue 
de TOseille, No. 48 a Paris.” Etteilla would have certainly 
done wisely not to have corrected the inaccuracies of which 
he speaks; his works have caused the ancient book dis¬ 
covered by Court de Gebelin to descend into the region of 
common magic and fortune-telling. He proves nothing who 
tries to prove too much, says an axiom of logic ; of this 
Etteilla is another example, but his efforts, nevertheless, led 
him to a certain acquaintance with the Kabbalah, as may 
be seen in some rare passages of his unreadable works. 

The true initiates, contemporaries of Etteilla, the Rosi- 
crucians, for example, and the Martinists, who were in 
possession of the real Tarot, as is proved by a book of 
St Martin, where the divisions are those of the Tarot, and 
the following passage written by an enemy of the Rosi- 
crucians: “ They claim to possess a volume wherein they 
can learn all that is to be found in other books which now 
are or indeed can ever come into existence. This volume 
is their own reason, in which they find the prototype of all 
that subsists by their facility in analyzing, summarizing, and 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 


271 


creating a kind of intellectual world and of all possible 
beings. See the philosophical, theosophical, and microcos- 
mic cards ”—(“Conspiracy against the Catholic Religion and 
against Crowned Heads,” by the author of “ The Veil raised 
for the Curious.” Paris, Crapard, 1792)—the true initiates, 
we repeat, who included the secret of the Tarot among their 
greatest mysteries, were far from protesting against the errors 
of Etteilla, and left him to re-veil, not reveal, the arcanum 
of the veritable claviculae of Solomon. So is it not without 
profound astonishment that we have recovered intact and 
unknown this key of all the doctrines and all the philo¬ 
sophies of the elder world. I speak of it as a key, and 
such it truly is, having the circle of four decades for its 
ring, and for its trunk or body the scale of twenty-two 
characters, then the three degrees of the triad for its wards, 
as Postel understood and represented it in his “ Key of 
things kept Secret from the Foundation of the World.” 

Without the Tarot, the magic of the ancients is to us 
a sealed book, and it is impossible to penetrate any of the 
great mysteries of the Kabbalah. It is, in fact, the hiero¬ 
glyphic book of the thirty-two Kabbalistic paths, and its 
summary explanation is found in the Sepher Jetzirah, a 
work attributed to the patriarch Abraham. It only provides 
the interpretation of the magic squares of Agrippa and 
Paracelsus, as we may prove by forming these same squares 
with the keys of the Tarot, and by reading the hieroglyphs 
which will thus be found collected. 

The seven magical squares of the planetary genii are, 
according to Paracelsus, as follows :— 


Saturn. 


2 

9 

4 

7 

S 

3 

6 

1 

8 







272 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 
Jupiter. 


sT 


14 

IO 

22 ' 

22 

18 

20 

12 

7 

20 

2 

8 

17 

9 

9 

8 

12 

3 

9 

5 

26 

II 

23 

8 

6 

11 


The Sun. 


9 

22 

■ 

32 

25 

19 

7 

11 

27 

18 

8 

3 

19 

14 

16 

i 5 

23 

24 

18 

20 

22 

21 

i 7 

13 

22 

29 

10 

19 

26 

12 

36 

5 

35 

6 

12 

13 


6 

12 

12 

10 

5 

10 

11 

11 

9 

6 

7 

12 

14 

6 

4 

1 




t r * 











































THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 


273 


Venus. 


22 

47 

18 

41 

0 

35 

8 

25 

23 

47 

1 7 

42 

11 

29 

IO 

6 

14 

9 

18 

36 

12 

3 

3 i 

16 

25 

43 

19 

37 

38 

14 

32 

3 i 

26 

44 

20 

21 

39 

8 

33 

22 

27 

45 

46 

15 

! 40 

19 

24 

03 

27 


17 1 = 7 

Mercury. 


8 

52 

39 

5 

24 

61 

66 

11 

49 

i 5 

14 

52 

52 

12 

10 

56 

4 i 

43 

22 

14 

45 

19 

18 

48 

33 

34 

35 

29 

20 

38 

39 

25 

40 

6 

27 

59 

3 i 

30 

3 i 

33 

17 

47 

55 

28 

25 

43 

42 

24 

9 

5 i 

53 

1 

12 

13 

5 i 

00 

16 

64 

12 

15 

61 

61 

6 

7 

47 - 





































































274 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


The Moon. 


37 

70 

29 

70 

21 

62 

12 

14 

4 i 

16 

28 

70 

30 

7 i 

12 

53 

14 

46 

47 

20 

» 

7 


72 

22 

35 

15 

16 

48 

68 

40 

81 

32 

62 

25 

56 

57 

17 

49 

29 

7 

66 

33 

65 

25 

26 

58 

40 

56 

3 i 

42 

74 

34 

66 

53 

27 

59 

10 

5 i 

2 

4i 

75 

35 

36 

68 

19 

60 

11 

65 

43 

44 

7 6 

77 

28 

20 

69 

1 

61 

12 

25 

60 

5 


Z&5 


d 


By adding up each column of these squares, the charac¬ 
teristic number of the planet is invariably obtained, and by 
finding the explanation of this number among the hiero¬ 
glyphs of the Tarot, the significance of all those figures, 
whether triangular, square, or transverse, which are formed 
by the numbers, may be obtained. The result will be a 
complete and profound knowledge of all the allegories and 
all the mysteries concealed by the ancients under the 
symbol of each planet, or rather of each personification of 
their influences, whether celestial or human, on all the 
events of life. 

The religious and Kabbalistical key of the Tarot will 
be now given in technical verses after the fashion of the 
ancient lawgivers. 


























THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 


2 75 


1. N. All things announce a conscious, active cause, 

2. 3 . Vivific Oneness based on number’s laws ; 

3. 3. Who all containing is by nought confined, 

4. T And all preceding hath no bound assign’d. 

5. n. This only Lord should man adore alone, 

6. 1. Who doth true doctrine to pure hearts make known. 

7. f. But acts of faith require a single chief, 

8. n. Whence we proclaim one altar, law, belief; 

9. 13. The changeless God will never change their base. 

10. \ He rules our days and dooms through every phase. 

11. 3 . His mercy’s wealth, which vice to nought will bring. 

12. b. His people promises a future King. 

13. jd. The tomb’s a path which to new worlds ascends, 

And life through all subsists, death only ends. 


Pure, sacred, steadfast truths we here repeat 
The venerated numbers thus complete ! 

14. 1 The angel blest doth calm and moderate, 

15. 3. The evil is the fiend of pride and hate. 

16. y. God doth the lightning and the fire subdue; 

17. a. He rules the dewy eve and evening dew; 

18. )s. The watchful moon He sets to guard our heights, 

19. p. His sun’s the source of life’s renewed delights. 

20. “i. His breath revivifies the dust of graves. 

°) 

or > Where crowds descend who are of lust the slaves; 


or > n. The mercy-seat He covers with His crown, 

22. ) And on the cherubs pours His glory down. 

By means of this purely dogmatic explanation the figures 
of the Kabbalistic alphabet of the Tarot will be already 
understood, but a table of its variations, according to divers 
Kabbalistic Jews, may also be added. 

1. Aleph. Being , spirit , man or god; the intelligible object; 
unity , the mother of numbers ; the primitive substance . 

All these ideas are hieroglyphically expressed by the figure 



276 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


of the Juggler, who, in other words, represents the active 
principle in the oneness of divine and human autocracy. 
His body and arms form the letter X, the prototype of 
sacred letters; he wears a nimbus about his head in the 
form of 00, the symbol of life and the universal spirit; in 
front of him there are swords, cups, and pantacles, and he 
lifts the miraculous rod towards heaven. He has a juvenile 
aspect and curly hair, like Apollo or Mercury; he has a 
smile of assurance on his lips, and the glance of intelligence 
in his eyes. 

2 Beth. The house of God and of man , the sanctuary , the 
law, the gnosis, the Kabbalah , the occult church , the 
duad, woman , the mother. 

Hieroglyph of the Tarot, vulgarly called the Female 
Pope, Pope Joan ; a woman crowned with a tiara, with 
the horns of the moon or Isis, the head surrounded by a 
veil, the solar cross on her breast, and supporting on her 
knees an open book, which she partly conceals beneath 
her mantle. 

The author of a pretended history of Pope Joan has dis¬ 
covered and adapted to his thesis, for good or for bad, two 
curious and ancient figures of the female pope or sovereign 
priestess of the Tarot, who is endowed in them with all the 
attributes of Isis; in the one she holds and caresses her 
son Horus, in the other she has long and flowing hair. She 
is seated between the two columns of the.duad, wears a 
sun with four rays on her breast, sets one hand on a book, 
and makes with the other the sign of sacerdotal esoterism, 
i.e., she opens only three fingers, keeping the rest clasped 
to signify mystery; the veil is behind her head, and on 
either side of her seat there is a sea whereon the flowers 
of the lotus are blooming. I deeply commiserate the un¬ 
fortunate scholar who declines to see anything in this time- 
honoured symbol but a monumental portrait of his so-called 
Pope Joan. 

In other Tarots the duad is symbolized by the Greek 
Juno, with one hand elevated towards heaven and one 
pointing to the earth, as if formulating by this gesture the 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 


277 


unique and dualistic dogma which is the base of magic, 
and opens the marvellous symbols of the Hermetic Emerald 
Table. 

» 

3. Ghimel. The Word ' the triad, plenitude, fruitfulness, 

nature, generation in the three worlds, the Mercury of 
the Sages. 

Symbol, The Empress, a winged woman, crowned, seated, 
and bearing on the top of her sceptre the globe of the 
world ; she has the eagle, image of life and the soul, as 
her sign. This figure is the Greek Venus-Urania, which 
was represented by St John in his Apocalypse as the woman 
clothed with the sun, crowned with twelve stars, and having 
the moon beneath her feet. It is the mystical quintessence 
of the triad, spirituality, immortality, the Queen of Heaven. 

4. Daleth. The door of government among the Easterns, 

initiation, the Tetragram, the tetrad, the philosophical 
cross, the cubic stone, or the base thereof. 

Hieroglyph, The Emperor, a sovereign whose body 
represents a right-angled triangle, and the legs a cross, the 
image of the Athanor of the philosophers. 

5. He. Indication, demonstration, instruction, latv, symbolism, 

philosophy, the woman, religion, the diabolical or 
angelical pentagram. 

Hieroglyph, The Pope, or supreme hierophant. In the 
more modern Tarots this sign is replaced by the image of 
Jupiter. The grand hierophant seated between the two 
columns of Hermes and Solomon makes the sign of esoterism, 
and supports himself on a cross with three horizontals of 
triangular form. Before him are two inferior ministers on 
their knees, so that having above him the capitols of the 
two columns, and below him the two heads of his ministers, 
he is the centre of the quinary, and represents the divine 
Pentagram, of which he affords the complete significance. 
In effect, the pillars are necessity, or law, the heads liberty, 
or action. From each pillar to each head a line may be 


2 7 3 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


drawn, and two lines from each pillar to each of the two 
heads. Thus will be obtained a square divided by a cross 
into four triangles, and in the centre of this cross will be 
the supreme hierophant, we had almost said like the garden 
spider in the centre of its web, if such a comparison were 
appropriate to the things of truth, glory, and light. 

6. Van. Concatenation , interlacement, lingam, the shaft of 

Eros , entanglement, union, embrace, strife, labour, 
antagonis?n, combination, equilibrium, the week of 
creation. 

Hieroglyph, man between vice and virtue. Above him 
beams the Sun of Truth, and in this sun is Love bending 
his bow and threatening vice with the shaft. In the order 
of the ten Sephiroth, this symbol corresponds to Tiphereth, 
that is, to idealism and beauty. The number six represents 
the antagonism of the two triads, that is, of absolute negation 
and absolute affirmation ; it is, consequently, the number of 
labour and liberty; and for this reason it corresponds to 
moral beauty and glory. 

7. Dzain. Weapon, sword, cherub's sivord of fire, sacred sep¬ 

tenary, triumph, royalty, priesthood, spirit and form, 
the three powers of the triad aud their four relations. 

Hieroglyph, a cubic chariot with four pillars, and an 
azure and starry drapery. Within the chariot, and between 
the four pillars, a victor crowned with a circle, from which 
rise and radiate three golden pentagrams. The victor has 
three superposed squares on his cuirass; he has the Urim 
and Thummim of the sovereign sacrificer on his shoulders, 
represented by the two crescents of the moon in Gedulah 
and Geburah; he holds in his hand a sceptfe surmounted 
by a globe, a square, and a triangle; his attitude is proud 
and calm. To the chariot is harnessed a double sphinx, that 
is to say, two sphinxes joined at the buttocks; one of them 
turns his head, so that they look in the same direction. The 
one turning his head is black, the other is white. On the 
square which forms the front of the chariot there is the 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 


279 


winged disc of the Egyptians surmounting the lingam of 
India. This symbol is perhaps the most beautiful and 
complete of all those which compose the clavicula of the 
Tarot. 


8. Cheth. Balance, attraction and repulsion, life, terror, 
promise, and menace, the tetragra?n with its reflection, 
the double stauros, the tetrad multiplied by the duad. 

Hieroglyph, Justice, with sword and balance. 

9. Teth. Good, hatred of evil, morality , wisdom, initiation. 

Hieroglyph, a sage supported on his staff and holding a 
lamp in front of him; he is wholly enveloped in his mantle. 
His inscription is The Hermit or Capuchin, because of 
his oriental hood ; but his real name is Prudence, and he 
completes thus the four cardinal virtues which appeared 
imperfect to Court de Gebelin and Etteilla. 

1 o. Jod. Cause, manifestation, praise, manly honour, phallus, 
virile fecundity , the paternal sceptre, Malchut, the 
Kingdom of God, the visible universe, the 7 iatural 
principle of supernatural things. 

Hieroglyph, The Wheel of Fortune, that is, the cosmic 
wheel of Ezekiel, with a Hermanubis ascending on the right, 
a Typhon descending on the left, a Sphinx equilibrating both, 
and holding a sword in its lion-like claws. This admirable 
symbol was disfigured by Etteilla, who replaced Typhon by 
a man, Hermanubis by a mouse, and the Sphinx by an ape, 
an allegory in all respects worthy of the Kabbalah of Etteilla. 

11. Caph. The hand in the act of grasping and holding, 
synthetic unity, perfect man, virility, age of reason. 

Hieroglyph, Strength, a woman crowned with the vital 
00, closing calmly and without effort the jaws of a raging 
lion. 


28 o 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


12. Lamed. Example, teaching, public lesson, accomplishment, 

sacrifice, spirit emancipated from matter. 

A man hanging by one foot and his hands tied behind his 
back, so that his body forms a triangle with inverted point, 
and his legs a cross above the triangle. The gibbet has the 
shape of a Hebrew Tau; the two trees which support it have 
each of them six lopped branches. The cross, superposed 
on an inverted triangle, is an alchemical symbol known to 
all adepts, and represents the accomplishment of the magnum 
opus. This personage who is thus hanging is therefore the 
adept, bound by his engagements, and with his feet turned 
towards heaven, signifying spiritualization; it is also the 
antique Prometheus, expiating by an immortal agony the 
penalty of his glorious theft. It is vulgarly the traitor Judas, 
and his execution menaces those who reveal the Great 
Arcanum. 

13. Mem. The firmament of Jupiter and Mars, domination 

and power, new birth, creation, and destruction, im¬ 
mortality through change, transmutation. 

Hieroglyph, Death, reaping crowned heads in a pasture 
where men are growing. 

14. Nun. The firmament of the sun, temperatures, seasons, 

motion, revolutions of life, which is ever new and ever 
the same, harmony of composites, forms tempered by 
equilibrium. 

Hieroglyph, Temperance, an angel, bearing the sign of 
the sun on her forehead, and the square and triangle on her 
bosom, pours from one ewer into another the two essences 
which compose the elixir of life. 

15. Samech. The firmament of Mercury , occult science, magic, 

commerce, eloquence, mystery, moral strength, the astral 
serpent, physical life , perpetual motion, the great magic 
agent. 

Hieroglyph, The Devil, the goat of Mendes, or the 
Baphomet of the Templars, with all his pantheistic attributes. 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 281 


This is the only hieroglyph which Etteilla perfectly understood 
and properly interpreted. 


1 6. Ay in. The firmament of the Moon, deteriorations, sub¬ 
versions, changes, weaknesses, destruction by antagonism. 

Hieroglyph, a tower struck by lightning, probably that of 
Babel. Two individuals, doubtless Nimrod and his false 
prophet, or minister, are precipited from top to bottom of the 
ruins. One of them in his fall represents perfectly the letter 
V, ay in. 

17. Phe. The firmament of the Soul, outpouring of thought, 
moral influence of the idea on forms, immortality , nature 
one and deathless in diversity, eternal fruitfulness. 

Hieroglyph, The Burning Star and eternal youth, an 
admirable allegory:—A naked woman, who represents at 
once Truth, Nature, and Wisdom unveiled, inclines two urns 
towards the earth, and pours out fire and water thereon; 
above her head glitters the Septenary, circling round an eight- 
pointed star, that of Venus—symbol of peace and love; the 
plants of earth flourish round the woman, and on one has 
alighted the butterfly of Psyche, emblem of the soul, replaced 
in some copies of the sacred book by a bird, a more Egyptian 
and probably more ancient symbol. This figure is analogous 
to many Hermetic symbols, and has its correspondence with 
the Burning Star of Masonic initiates, which gives expression 
to most of the mysteries of the secret Rosicrucian doctrine. 


18. Tsade. The elements, the visible world, reflected light, 
material for 77 is, symbolis 7 n, 7 nysteries, esotericis 7 n, 
doctrine, hierarchic distribution of the light of occultis 7 n. 

Hieroglyph, The Moon, dew falling, a crab in the water, 
rising towards the earth, a dog and a wolf tied to the foot of 
two towers and barking at the moon, a path lost in the 
distance, and sprinkled with drops of blood. 


282 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


19. Quoph. Compounds , the head, the Apex, the Prince of 

Heaven, the true light, truth, the Holy City, Philo¬ 
sophical Gold. 

Hieroglyph, a radiant Sun, and two naked children joining 
hands in a fortified enclosure. In other Tarots, it is a spinner 
unwinding destinies; in others, again, a naked child mounted 
on a white horse, and displaying a scarlet standard. 

20. Resch. The vegetative, the generative power of the earth, 

the Great Arcanum of eternal life. 

Hieroglyph, The Judgment. A genius sounds a trumpet, 
and the dead rise from their graves. These dead people, 
thus brought back to life, are a man, a woman, and a child 
—the triad of human life. 

21. Schin. The sensitive, flesh, fatality, blindness, matter 
left to itself, eternal life. 

Hieroglyph, The Fool. A man in fool’s dress wandering 
aimlessly, burdened with a wallet carried behind him, and 
doubtless full of his follies and vices. His disordered clothes 
reveal that which should be concealed, and he is attacked by 
a tiger without knowing how to avoid it or defend himself. 

22. Thau. The ?nicrocosmos, the Absolute, the universal 
synthesis, and the universal science. 

Hieroglyph, Kether, or the Kabbalistic Crown, between 
the four mysterious animals; in the midst of the Crown is 
Truth, holding a magic wand in each hand. 1 

Such are the twenty-two keys of the Tarot which explain 
all its numbers. Thus, the juggler, or key of the unities, 
explains the four aces with their quadruple progressive signi¬ 
fication in the three worlds and in the First Cause. Thus, 
the ace of deniers or of the circle, is the soul of the world; 
the ace of swords is militant intelligence: the ace of cups is 
loving intelligence; the ace of clubs is creative intelligence. 

1 See Note 39. 


THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 


283 


They are also the principles of motion, progress, productive¬ 
ness, and virility. Each number multiplied by a key gives 
another number, which, explained in its turn by the keys, 
completes the philosophical and religious revelation contained 
in every sign. As each of the fifty-six cards can be multiplied 
by the twenty-two keys in turn, a series of combinations 
results which gives all the most astonishing consequences of 
revelation and of light. It is a truly philosophical machine 
which prevents the mind from going astray, even while leaving 
it its own initiative and freedom ; it is mathematics in their 
application to the absolute, the alliance of the real and the 
ideal, a lottery of thoughts, all of which are rigorously exact, 
like numbers; in fine, it is perhaps at once the simplest and 
grandest thing ever conceived by human genius. 

If we now take a Tarot and join by fours all the cards com¬ 
prising the Wheel or Rota of William Postel, if we place the 
four aces, the four duads, &c., together, we shall have ten 
packets of cards providing the hieroglyphical explanation of 
the triangle of the Divine Names on the scale of the denary 
which we give on page 286. They may be then read off 
as follows, comparing each number with its corresponding 
Sephiroth. 

miT 1 

Four letters of the name all names combining— 

1. Keter. The four aces. 

See on God’s crown four mystic gems are shining ! 

2. Chocmah. The four twos. 

His wisdom’s fount a four-fold stream diffuses. 

3. Binah. The four threes. 

His intellect its four-fold proof produces. 

4. Chesed. The four fours. 

Four bounties ever from His mercy rise. 

5. Geburah. The four fives. 

Four times His rigour will four faults chastise. 


284 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


6. Tiphereth. The four sixes. 

His beauty is revealed by four pure rays. 

7. Netsah. The four sevens. 

As oft His conquest in our songs we praise. 

8. Hod. The'four eights. 

Four times He triumphs in His life eternal. 

9. Jesod. The four nines. 

Foundations four support His throne supernal. 

10. Malchut. The four tens. 

Four times the same His single realm declare, 

Like to the gems that star His crown of glory rare ! 

By this simple arrangement the Kabbalistic sense of each 
plate may be seen. Thus, for example, the five of clubs 
signifies rigorously the Geburah of Jod, that is, the justice of 
the Creator and the wrath of man; the seven of cups the 
victory of mercy, or the triumph of woman; the eight of 
swords signifies conflict or eternal equilibrium; and so on for 
the rest. We may thus understand how the ancient pontiffs 
made use of it to elicit oracles; the plates, drawn by lot, 
always gave a new Kabbalistic sense rigorously exact in its 
combination, which alone was fortuitous ; and as the faith of 
the ancients attributed nothing to chance, they read the 
responses of Providence in the Tarot, which were called by 
the Hebrews Theraph or Theraphim, as was perceived first of 
all by the erudite Gaffarel, one of the accredited magicians of 
the Cardinal de Richelieu. 

As to the trump cards they may be explained by a final 
couplet:— 

King, Queen, Knight, Knave. 

The bridegroom, youth, and child, then all the human race— 
Thy path by these degrees back to the One retrace. 

The ten Sephiroth and twenty-two Tarots form what the 
Kabbalists call the thirty-two paths of the absolute science. 



THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 285 

The method of reading the hieroglyphs of the Tarot is to 
arrange them either in a square or triangle, placing the even 
numbers in opposition and conciliating them with the uneven. 
Four signs always express the absolute in any order whatsoever, 
and are interpreted by a fifth. Thus the solution of all magical 
questions is that of the Pentagram, and all antinomies are 
explained by harmonious unity. 

So disposed, the Tarot is a veritable oracle, and answers all 
possible questions with more clearness and accuracy than the 
Android of Albertus Magnus ; so that a prisoner devoid of 
books, had he only a Tarot of which he knew how to make 
use, could, in a few years, acquire a universal science, and 
converse with an unequalled doctrine and inexhaustible 
eloquence. This wheel, in fact, is the true key of the oratorical 
art, and of the great art of Raymond Lully ; it is the true 
secret of the transmutation of darkness into light; it is the 
first and most important of all the arcana of the magnum opus . 
By means of this universal key of symbolism all the alle¬ 
gories of India, Egypt, and Judea are made intelligible; the 
Apocalypse of St John is a Kabbalistic book, the sense of 
which is exactly indicated by the figures and numbers of the 
Urim, Thummim, Theraphim, and Ephod, all summarized and 
completed by the Tarot; the sanctuaries of eld are no longer 
full of mysteries, and the signification of the objects of the 
Hebrew cultus may for the first time be understood. As a 
fact, who does not recognise in the golden table, crowned and 
supported by cherubim, which covered the ark of the covenant 
and served as the propitiatory, the same symbols as in the 
twenty-first key of the Tarot ? The ark was a hieroglyphical 
synthesis of the whole Kabbalistic doctrine; it contained the 
Jod, or blossoming staff, of Aaron; the He, or cup, the 
gomor, which held the manna; the two tables of the law, a 
symbol analogous to that of the sword of justice; and the 
manna contained in the gomor, four objects which wonderfully 
interpret the letters of the divine Tetragram. 

We have ourselves discovered, in a sufficiently extraordinary 
manner, a sixteenth-century medal, which is a key to the 
Tarot. We scarcely know whether we should confess that 
this medal, and the place where it was to be found, were 
shewn to us in a dream by the divine Paracelsus; however 


286 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


this may be, the medal is in our possession. On one side it 
represents the juggler, in a German costume of the period, 
holding his girdle in one hand, and the Pentagram in the 
other. On the table in front of him, between an open book 
and a clasped purse, he has ten deniers or talismans arranged 
in two lines of three each, and in a square of four; the legs 
of the table form two n, and those of the juggler two inverted 
T The back of the medal contains the letters of the alphabet 
disposed within a magic square, after the following manner :— 


A 

B 

C D 

E 

F 

G 

H I 

K 

L 

N 

M O 

P 

Q 

R 

S T 

V 


X 

V Z N 



It will be seen that this alphabet has only twenty-two 
letters, the V and N being repeated, and that they are 
arranged in four quinaries, with a tetrad for basis and key. 
The four final letters are two combinations of the duad and 
triad, and read Kabbalistically they form the word Azoth, by 
ascribing to the configuration of the letters their value in primi¬ 
tive Hebrew, and by reckoning N as X, Z as it is in Roman 
characters, V as the Hebrew 1 Vau, which between two vowels, 
or letters of the value of vowels, is pronounced O, and X as 
the primitive Tau, which was precisely of this shape. The 
whole Tarot is therefore explained in this wonderful medal, 
truly worthy of Paracelsus, which we submit for the examina¬ 
tion of antiquaries. The letters disposed by four times five 
are summarized by the word mZtf, analogous to those of the 
Tetragram and Inri, and containing all the mysteries of the 
Kabbalah. 

Vestiges of the Tarot are found among all nations of the 
world. The Italian version is the most faithful and the best 



THE SCIENCE OF THE PROPHETS 287 


preserved, but it may be even further improved by precious 
indications borrowed from the Spanish game, which still 
preserves the chief primitive signs; the two of cups, for 
example, in the Naibi, is completely Egyptian, and we there 
see two antique vases, having handles formed by two ibises, 
superposed on a cow; in the same cards a unicorn is found 
in the centre of the four of deniers; the three of cups 
shows us the figure of Isis issuing from a vase; while from 
two other vases two ibises come forth, one bearing a crown 
for the goddess, the other a lotus, which he appears to be 
offering to her. The four aces bear the image of the sacred 
hieratic serpent, and, in certain games, the double triangle of 
Solomon, is depicted in place of the symbolic unicorn. 

The German Tarots are more mutilated, and little beyond 
the numbers of the keys can be found in them, these being 
crowded with pantagruelian figures. The Chinese Tarot 
preserves several emblems; the deniers and swords may be 
easily recognised, but it would be more difficult to identify 
the cups and clubs. 

It was at the epoch of the Gnostic and Manichsean heresies 
that the Tarot was lost to the Church, and it was at the same 
period that the meaning of the divine Apocalypse also 
perished. It was no longer known that the seven seals of this 
Kabbalistic book are seven pantacles to be explained by the 
analogies of the numbers, characters, and symbols of the 
Tarot. Thus the universal tradition of the one religion was 
for an instant broken, the darkness of doubt spread over the 
whole earth, and to the uninitiated it appeared that true 
Catholicism, universal revelation, had for a moment vanished. 
The explanation of the work of St John by the signs of the 
Kabbalah will be a perfectly new revelation. 

The most curious and most complete key to the Tarot is 
found in the monumental work of Kircher on Egypt. It is 
the reproduction of an Isiac table which once belonged to the 
celebrated Cardinal Bembo. This table was of copper with 
figures in enamel; it has unfortunately been lost, but Kircher’s 
copy is faithful, and this learned Jesuit divined that it con¬ 
tained the hieroglyphic key of the sacred alphabets, though 
he was unable to pursue his interpretation. The Bembine 
tablet is divided into three equal compartments; above are 


288 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


the twelve celestial houses, below the twelve laborious stations 
of the year, in the centre the twenty-one sacred signs corre¬ 
sponding to the sacred letters. In the heart of the central 
region is the figure of the pantomorphic Inyx, the emblem of 
the universal being, corresponding to the Hebrew Jod —that 
unique letter from which all others are derived. Around the 
Inyx, there is the Ophionian triad, corresponding to the three 
mother letters of the Egyptian and Hebrew alphabet; on the 
right are the two ibimorphous and Serapian triads; on the 
left is the Nepthean triad and that also of Hecate, symbols of 
active and passive, volatile and fixed, fructifying fire and 
generating water. Each pair of triads combined with the 
centre gives a septenary; the centre itself contains one. 
Thus, the three septenaries give the absolute numeral of the 
three worlds, and the complete number of primitive letters, 
to which a complementary sign is added, as the zero to the 
nine numeral symbols. 

The alphabet of Thoth is the original of our Tarot only in 
an indirect manner. The latter, as it has been preserved to 
us, is of Jewish origin, and the symbolical figures are not older 
than the reign of Charles VII. Jacquemin Gringonneur’s 
game of cards is the first Tarot with which we are acquainted, 
but it reproduces symbols of the highest antiquity. The game 
itself was an attempt on the part of some astrologer of the 
period to restore the monarch to reason by means of this Key 
of oracles, the answers to which, resulting from the diverse 
combination of the signs, are always exact like mathematics, 
and proportioned like the harmonies of nature. But in order 
to utilize this instrument of science and reason, one must 
already be truly reasonable, and the unfortunate king, relapsed 
into a second childhood, saw only an infant’s toy in the 
pictures of Gringonneur, and turned the mysterious alphabets 
of the Kabbalah into a game of cards. 


PART VII 

THE SCIENCE OF HERMES 1 


Introduction. 

The transcendent sciences of the Kabbalah and of magic 
guarantee to man an exceptional, true, efficient, practical 
power, and we must condemn them as vain and untruthful if 
they do not impart it. Judge the dootors of the law by their 
works, said the Great Master, and the rule is infallible. If 
you wish me to believe in what you know, shew me what 
you do! 

In order to upraise man to moral emancipation, God hides 
Himself from him, and, in a certain sense, surrenders to him 
the government of the world. He leaves His existence to be 
divined by the grandeurs and harmonies of Nature, so that 
man may progressively perfect himself by continually enlarging 
the idea he conceives of his Maker. Man knows God only 
by the names which he gives to this Being of beings, and 
distinguishes Him only by the representations of Him which 
he attempts to trace. He is thus in a certain sense the creator 
of Him by whom he was created. He believes himself to be 
the image of God, and by indefinitely enlarging his own 
reflection he believes that he is outlining in infinite space the 
shadow of One who is bodiless, shadowless, and unconfined. 

To create God, to accomplish our own creation, to 

MAKE OURSELVES INDEPENDENT, IMPASSIBLE, AND IMMORTAL 

—here certainly is a programme more rash than the dream 
of Prometheus. Its foundation is bold even to impiety, the 
thought ambitious even to madness. Nevertheless, it is a 

1 See Note 40. 

T z8 9 



290 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


programme which is only paradoxical in the form, as this lends 
itself to a false and sacrilegious interpretation. In one sense 
it is perfectly reasonable, and its realization and complete 
fulfilment is promised by the science of the adepts. Man, in 
fact, makes himself a God conformed to his own intelligence 
and goodness; the God he adores is always his own magnified 
likeness. To conceive the Absolute in goodness and justice 
is to be one’s self most just and good. Intellectual and moral 
qualities are riches ; and the greatest of all riches. They must 
be acquired by toil and struggle. The inequality of aptitudes 
and the case of children born with a more perfect organization 
than others will be objected, but we must believe such organ¬ 
isms to be the result of a more advanced labour of Nature, and 
that the children so endowed have acquired them, if not by 
their individual efforts, at least by the joint efforts of the human 
beings with whom their existence is bound up. It is a secret 
of Nature, who does nothing by chance. The possession of 
more developed intellectual faculties, as also that of money 
and lands, constitutes an imprescriptible right of transmission 
and inheritance. 

Yes, man is called to finish the work of his Creator, and 
each of the moments he employs to improve or spoil himself 
is decisive for eternity. It is by the acquisition of an invariably 
upright mind, and an invariably just will, that he makes him¬ 
self alive for life eternal, since nothing survives to injustice 
and error but the wretchedness of their disorder. To under¬ 
stand what is good is to desire it, and, in the order of justice, 
to desire is to perform. For this reason the Gospel tells us 
that men will be judged according to their works. Our works 
make us what we are to an extent so great that our bodies 
receive from our habits a modification and sometimes a com¬ 
plete change of appearance. A shape acquired or imposed 
becomes a providence or fatality for our entire existence. 
Those bizarre figures with which the Egyptians endowed their 
human symbols of divinity represent the fatal forms. Typhon, 
by his crocodile mouth, is doomed to devour unceasingly to 
fill his hippopotamus belly. So is he devoted by his voracity 
and ugliness to eternal destruction. 

Man can destroy his faculties by negligence or abuse. He 
can create for himself new faculties by the good use of those 


THE SCIENCE OF HERMES 


29 


which he has received from Nature. It is said frequently that 
the affections are not to be commanded, that faith is not pos¬ 
sible for all, that character cannot be transformed, but all these 
assertions are only true for the perverse or the indolent. We 
can make ourselves confiding, pious, loving, self-sacrificing, 
when we sincerely wish to be so. We can enrich the mind 
with the serenity of justice, and the will with the omnipotence 
of justice. We can reign in heaven by faith and on earth by 
knowledge. The man who can govern himself is the king of 
all Nature. 

We are now about to show by what means the true initiates 
became masters of life through subduing suffering and death, 
how they operated on themselves and others the trans¬ 
formations of Proteus, how they exercised the divination of 
Apollonius, how they manufactured the gold of Raymond 
Lully and of Flamel, how to renew their youth they possessed 
the secret of Postel the Resuscitated, and the fabulous Cag- 
liostro. We shall reveal, in fine, the ultimate secrets of magic. 

I.—The Magnum Opus. 

The magnum opus is pre-eminently the creation of man by 
himself, that is, the full and complete conquest which he can 
make of his faculties and his future; it is pre-eminently the 
perfect emancipation of his will, which assures his universal 
dominion over Azoth and the domain of Magnesia, that is, a 
full power over the Great Magical Agent. This Magic Agent, 
which the old Hermetic philosophers disguised under the 
name of the first matter of the 7 nagnum opus, determines the 
species of modifiable substance, and metallic transmutation, 
as well as the universal medicine, can be really attained by its 
means. This is no hypothesis; it is a fact already tested and 
rigorously demonstrable. 

Nicolas Flamel and Raymond Lully, both poor, evidently 
distributed immense riches. Agrippa never progressed beyond 
the first part of the magnum opus , and he died in the attempt, 
struggling towards complete self-possession and to establish 
his independence. 

Like all magical mysteries, the Hermetic operations, and 
the secrets of the magnum opus, are triple; they are religious, 


292 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


philosophical, and natural, or material, all interdependent. 
The gold of the philosophers is, in religion, the absolute and 
supreme reason; in philosophy it is truth ; in visible nature it 
is the sun, which is the emblem of the sun of truth, as that is 
itself the shadow of the First Source whence all splendours 
spring; in the subterranean and mineral world it is the purest 
and most perfect gold. For this reason the search after the 
magnum opus is called the search after the Absolute, and the 
great work is itself called the work of the sun. 

As magic is the science of the light, so Hermeticism is the 
science of fire, and it is wholly contained in the doctrine of 
Hermes Trismegistus, sculptured primitively, it is said, on 
an emerald table. We have explained already its first 
articles; those which refer to the operation of the magnum 
opus are as follows :— 

“ Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, the ethereal 
from the gross, gently, but with great industry. 

“It ascends from earth to heaven, and again it comes 
down from heaven to earth, and it is invested with the 
potency of superior and inferior things. 

“ Thou wilt possess by this means the glory of the whole 
world, and all darkness will depart from thee. 

“It is the strong power of every power, for it will over¬ 
come all things subtle and penetrate all things solid. 

“It is thus that the world was created.” 

To separate that which is ethereal from that which is 
gross, in the first operation, which is wholly interior, is to 
emancipate the soul from every vice and prejudice, and this 
is accomplished by the use of the philosophic salt, namely, 
wisdom ; of mercury, which is personal skill and toil; finally, 
of sulphur, which represents vital energy and the ardour of 
will. By this means is achieved the transmutation of the 
least precious things, even the refuse of the earth, into 
spiritual gold. It is in this sense that we must under¬ 
stand the parables of the Turba Philosophorum , of Bernard 
Trevisan, Basilius Valentinus, Mary the Egyptian, and other 
alchemical prophets; but in their works, as in the magnum 
opus , we must skilfully separate the ethereal from the gross, 
the mystical from the positive, allegory from theory. If we 
wish to read them with pleasure and profit, we must first 


THE SCIENCE OE HERMES 


293 


interpret them allegorically in their entirety, then descend 
From allegories to realities by the way of the correspond¬ 
ences or analogies indicated in the one dogma—that which 
is above is as that which is below, and conversely. 

All the masters in knowledge have recognised that it is 
impossible to arrive at material results if the analogies of 
the universal medicine and the philosophers’ stone have 
not been found in the two superior degrees of the religious 
and philosophical worlds. Then they say the work is easy, 
simple, and inexpensive; otherwise, it dissipates unprofit- 
ably the fortune and life of the seekers. 

The first matter of the magnum opus is, in the superior 
world, enthusiasm and activity; in the intermediate world, 
it is intelligence and industry; in the inferior world, it is 
toil; in science, it is sulphur, mercury, and salt, which, con¬ 
densed and volatilized by turns, compose the azoth of the 
sages. 

The Hermetic art is, therefore, at once a religion, a 
philosophy, and a natural science. As a religion, it is that 
of the ancient Magi and the initiates of all the ages ; as a 
philosophy, its principles may be found in the Alexandrian 
School, and in the theories of Pythagoras; as a science, 
its methods must be ascertained from Paracelsus, Nicolas 
Flamel, and Raymond Lully. The science is real for those 
alone who admit and understand both the philosophy and 
the religion, and its processes will succeed only for the adept 
who has attained to sovereign power of will, and thus has 
become the monarch of the elementary world. 

The disciples of Hermes before promising to their adepts 
the elixir of perpetual youth and the powder of projection 
recommend them to seek the philosophical stone. What 
is this stone, and why is it thus named ? The great Initiator 
of the Christians invites His believers to build upon the rock 
or stone if they do not wish their edifices to be destroyed. 
He is Himself called the corner stone, and He tells His 
most faithful disciple, “ Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram 
cedificabo ecclesiam meamP This stone, say the masters in 
alchemy, is the true salt of the philosophers, which is the 
third ingredient in the composition of azoth. Now, Azoth, 
as we know, is the name of the great Hermetic and true 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


294 

philosophical agent, so their salt is represented under the 
form of a cubic stone, as may be seen in the twelve Keys of 
Basilius Valentinus, or in the allegories of Trevisan. This 
stone is the foundation of absolute philosophy; it is the 
supreme and immovable reason, and the doctrine of 
universal harmonies by the sympathy of contrary things. 
Before dreaming of the metallic work we must be for ever 
established on the absolute principles of wisdom; we must 
possess that reason which is the touchstone of truth. Never 
will a prejudiced man be the king of Nature and the master 
of transmutations. The philosophical stone is, then, before 
all things, needful. To find the absolute in the infinite, the 
indefinite, and the finite, such is the magnum opus of the 
sages; such is the whole secret of Hermes ; such is the stone 
of the philosophers. This stone is one and multiple; it is 
decomposed by analysis and recomposed by synthesis. In 
the analysis it is a powder, the alchemical powder of pro¬ 
jection ; before the analysis, and in the synthesis, it is a 
stone. This stone, say the masters, must not be exposed to 
the air, nor to the glances of the profane; it must be kept 
concealed and preserved with care in the most secret place 
of the owner’s laboratory, and the key of that place must be 
always carried about the person. 

He who possesses the Great Arcanum is a true king, and 
more than a king, for he is inaccessible to all fears and to 
all vain hopes. I11 any malady of soul or body, a single 
morsel detached from the precious stone, a single grain of 
the divine powder, are more than sufficient to cure him. 
He that hath ears to hear let him hear, as the Master sayeth. 

To find the philosopher’s stone, we must then, as Hermes 
tells us, separate the volatile from the fixed with great 
care and minute attention. Thus, we must separate our 
certitudes from our beliefs, and clearly distinguish the 
respective domains of science and faith; clearly under¬ 
stand that we do not know what we only believe in, and 
that we no longer believe anything to the knowledge of 
which we have attained; thus the essence of the things of 
faith is the unknown and indefinite, whilst it is entirely the 
reverse in the things of science. It will thence be concluded 
that knowledge rests on reason and experience, whilst the 


THE SCIENCE OF HERMES 


2 95 


basis of faith is in sentiment. In other words, the philo¬ 
sophical stone is the true certitude which human prudence 
assures to conscientious researches and to modest doubt, 
whilst religious enthusiasm gives it exclusively to faith. 
Now, it belongs neither to reason devoid of aspirations, nor 
to aspirations devoid of reason. True certitude is the 
reciprocal acquiescence of the reason which knows in the 
sentiment which believes, and of the sentiment which believes 
in the reason which knows. The definitive alliance of faith 
and reason will result not from their absolute distinction 
and separation, but from their mutual control and fraternal 
concurrence. Such is the meaning of the two pillars of 
Solomon’s porch, one of which is called Jakin, and the other 
Bohas, one being white and the other black. They are 
distinct and separate, they are even contrary in appearance, 
but if blind force should seek to unite them, the arch of 
the Temple would fall in. In their separation they are one 
sustaining force, but joined they are two forces which 
mutually destroy each other. In the same way the spiritual 
power diminishes so soon as it attempts to usurp the 
temporal, and the temporal power is the victim of its 
encroachment on the spiritual. Gregory VII. lost the 
papacy, and the schismatic kings have lost and forfeited the 
monarchy. Human equilibrium has need of two bases, the 
world gravitates by means of two forces, generation requires 
two sexes. Such is the meaning of the Arcanum of Solomon 
represented by the two pillars of the Temple, Jakin and 
Bohas. 

The sun and moon of alchemists correspond to the same 
symbol, and concur in the perfection of the philosopher’s 
stone. The sun is the hieroglyphic sign of truth, because 
it is the visible source of light, and the rough stone is the 
symbol of stability. For this reason the ancients adored 
the sun under the figure of a black stone, which they 
called Heliogabalus, and the alchemists of the Middle 
Ages also indicated the philosophic stone as the first means 
of manufacturing the gold of the philosophers, that is, of 
transforming all vital powers, represented by the six metals, 
into the sun, or otherwise, into truth and light, the first and 
indispensable operation of the mag?ium opus , and one which 


296 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


leads to the secondary adaptations, and makes known by 
the analogies of nature the natural and unregenerate gold 
to the creators of the spiritual and living gold, to the 
possessors of the true salt, the true mercury, and the true 
sulphur of the philosophers. 1 

To find the philosophic stone is then to have discovered 
the Absolute, as it is otherwise called by the masters. Now, 
the Absolute is that which tolerates no errors; it is the 
separation of the fixed from the volatile, it is the rule of 
the imagination, it is the very necessity of being, it is the 
immutable law of truth and reason ; the Absolute is that 
which is. God Himself cannot exist save in virtue of a 
supreme and inevitable reason. It is therefore this reason 
which is the Absolute ; it is in this we must believe if we 
desire our faith to possess a reasonable and solid basis. 

He who would attain to the comprehension of the 
Grand Word, 2 and to the possession of the Grand Secret, 
must, after studying the principles here laid down, read 
the Hermetic philosophers attentively, and he will attain 
initiation as others have attained it, but the unique dogma 
of Hermes must be taken as the key of their allegories, 
and the order indicated in the kabbalistic alphabet of the 
Tarot must be followed to classify the subjects and direct 
the operation. All the alchemical masters who have written 
on the magnum opus have employed symbolical and figurative 
expressions, and they have rightly done so, as much to repel 
the profane from a work which for them would be dangerous 
as to make themselves understood among adepts by reveal¬ 
ing to them the entire world of analogies ruled by the one 
and sovereign dogma of Hermes. Thus for them gold and 
silver are the king and queen, or the moon and sun; 
sulphur is the flying eagle; mercury the winged and horded 
goat, seated on the cube and crowned with flames; matter, 
or salt, is the winged dragon ; the metals in ebullition are 
lions of various colours; finally, the whole work has the 
pelican and phoenix for its symbols. 

The transformations of Hermetic chemistry are the 
artificial development of natural germs. No one makes 


1 See Note 41. 


2 See Note 42. 


THE SCIENCE OF HERMES 


297 


gold, but we can assist nature to make it, and all the 
science of Hermes consists in the sagacity which selects 
and arranges nature’s own materials in order that she may 
perform her work, which she never fails to do when the 
instruments she makes use of are found naturally or 
artificially disposed as she herself disposes them. The 
whole secret of Hermetic philosophy is contained in this 
single indication. It is the direction of the natural fire, 
not to create but to ripen minerals. We have discovered 
pisciculture and Hermeticism is metalliculture. But who 
will reap carps by sowing herring-roe ? How then can gold 
be produced from salt, sulphur, and mercury? 1 M. Louis 
Lucas, the learned inventor of the biometer, has already 
demonstrated that, according to the notions of the ancients, 
substance is single, and owes its special forms to the diversity 
of its modes of molecular polarization and to the varied 
angularity of its magnetic radiation. All beings are thus 
individual magnets, and the problem to be resolved by the 
magic of Hermes is this:—How to accumulate and fix the 
latent caloric in an artificial body in such a manner as to 
change the molecular polarization of natural bodies by their 
amalgamation with the artificial body. 

The creation of gold in the magnuvi opus is performed 
by transmutation and multiplication. Raymond Lully, one 
of the grand and sublime masters of the science, says that 
to make gold we must have gold —ex nihilo nihil jit; we 
cannot actually create wealth, we augment and multiply 
it. Let the aspirants to knowledge, therefore, thoroughly 
understand that neither miracles nor conjuring tricks are 
to be expected of the adept. Hermetic science, like all 
true sciences, is mathematically demonstrable; even its 
material results are as rigorous as those of a correctly 
worked-out equation. Hermetic gold is not only a true 
doctrine, a light wherein there is no shadow, a truth devoid 
of all alloy of falsehood; it is also a real, material, pure 
gold, the most precious which can be found in the mines 
of earth. But the vivific gold, the vivific sulphur, or the 
true fire of the philosophers, must be sought in the house 


1 See Note 43. 


298 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


of mercury. This fire is alimented by air; to describe its 
attractive and expansive power, we cannot suggest a better 
comparison than that of the thunderbolt, which is at first 
only a dry, terrestrial exhalation joined to a humid vapour, 
but by dint of excitation, assuming a fiery nature, it acts 
on the humidity inherent in it, which it attracts to itself 
and changes into its own nature, after which it precipitates 
itself with rapidity towards the earth, whereto it is attracted 
by a fixed nature similar to its own. The salt and sulphur 
serve only to prepare the mercury. 

These words, enigmatic in their form but fundamentally 
clear, express briefly what the philosophers understand by 
their mercury fecundated with sulphur which becomes the 
lord and regenerator of the salt; it is Azoth the universal 
magnesia , the Great Magic Agent, the Astral Light, fecun¬ 
dated by animal energy, by intellectual power, which they 
compare to sulphur because of its affinities with divine 
fire. As for salt, it is absolute matter. Every material 
thing contains salt, and all salt can be converted into pure 
gold by the combined operation of sulphur and mercury, 
which sometimes act so rapidly that transmutation can be 
* instantaneously accomplished without fatigue to the operator 
and almost without expense; at other times, and according 
to the more contrary disposition of the atmospheric media, 
the operation requires several days, months, and sometimes 
even years. All depends on the interior magnes of Paracelsus. 
The work wholly consists in projection , and the projection 
is perfectly accomplished by the effective and realizable 
comprehension of a single word. There is indeed but one 
important operation in the work; it consists in sublimation, 
which is nothing else, according to Geber, than the elevation 
of the dry substance by means of fire, with adherence to its 
proper vase. 

As we have already said, there exist two palmary natural 
laws, two essential laws which produce by counterpoise the 
universal equilibrium of things ; these are stability and motion, 
analogous, in philosophy, to truth and invention, and, in 
absolute conception, to necessity and liberty, which are the 
very essence of God. The Hermetic philosophers give the 
name of fixed to all that is ponderable, to all that by its 


THE SCIENCE OF HERMES 


2 99 


nature tends to central rest and immobility; they call every¬ 
thing which more naturally and readily obeys the law of 
motion volatile, and they form their stone by the analysis, 
that is, by the volatilization of the fixed, then by the synthesis, 
that is, by the fixation of the volatile, which they accomplish 
by the application to the fixed, called their salt, of sulphurated 
mercury, or the light of life directed and rendered all-powerful 
by a secret operation. They avail themselves also of all 
nature, and their stone is found wherever salt exists, which 
causes it to be said that no substance is foreign to the 
magnum opus , and that even the most seemingly contemptible 
and vile materials may be changed into gold, which is true in 
this sense that, as we have said, they all contain the pro¬ 
ductive salt, represented in our emblems by the cubic stone 
itself. To know how to extract from all matter the pure salt 
concealed therein is to possess the secret of the stone, which 
is therefore a saline stone, decomposed and reconstituted by 
the Od or universal Astral Light; it is one and multiple, for, 
like common salt, it can be dissolved and incorporated with 
other substances. Obtained by analysis, it might be called 
the universal quicksilver; recovered by the synthetic method, 
it is the true panacea of the ancients, for it cures every disease, 
whether of soul or body, and has been called pre-eminently 
the medicine of all nature. When by absolute initiation we 
dispose of the forces of the Universal Agent, we have always 
this stone at our disposal, for its extraction is a simple and 
easy operation quite distinct from projection or metallic 
realization. This stone in its sublimated state must not, as 
we have said, come in contact with atmospheric air, which 
may partly dissolve it and destroy its virtue; it would not be 
safe, moreover, to inhale its emanations. The wise man 
more readily preserves it in its natural envelopes, which the 
Kabbalists call skins. To express hieroglyphically this law of 
prudence, they gave to their mercury, which was personified 
in Egypt by Hermanubis, a dog’s head, and to their sulphur, 
represented by the Baphomet of the Templars, or the prince 
of the Sabbath, that goat’s head which has caused the secret 
associations of the middle ages to be so much decried. 1 


1 See Note 44. 


3 °° 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


The magnum opus of Hermes is an essentially magical 
operation, and the most supreme of all, for it supposes the 
absolute in knowledge and in will. There is light in gold, 
gold in light, and light in all things. The intelligent will, 
which assimilates light, thus directs the operations of sub¬ 
stantial form, and only employs chemistry as a very secondary 
instrument. The influence of human will and intelligence on 
the operations of nature, partly dependent on its Logos, is 
besides a fact so certain that all serious alchemists have 
succeeded in proportion to their attainments and faith, re¬ 
producing their. thought in the phenomena of the fusion, 
salification, and recomposition of metals. 

The Great Agent of the sun’s operation is that force de¬ 
scribed in the symbol of Hermes on the Emerald Table; it is 
universal magic power, it is the igneous spiritual motor, the 
Jewish Od, and the Astral Light according to the expression 
adopted in this work. It is the secret, living, philosophical 
fire of which no Hermetic philosopher speaks, save with the 
most mysterious reserves; it is the universal sperm, the secret 
of which they guarded, merely representing it under the figure 
of the caduceus of Hermes. An immense physical secret was 
thus concealed under the kabbalistic parables of the ancients. 
We have succeeded in unravelling it, and we present it literally 
to the investigations of gold-makers :— 

1. The four imponderable fluids are only diverse mani¬ 
festations of one universal agent, which is light. 

2. Light is the fire which is used in the magnwn opus 
under the form of electricity. 

3. Human will directs the vital light by means of the 
nervous organization; this is now called magnetizing. 

4. The secret agent of the magnum opus> the Azoth of 
the sages, the living and vivifying gold of the philosophers, 
the universal productive metallic agent, is magnetized elec¬ 
tricity, the first matter of the magnum opus. 

The great Hermetic Arcanum, revealed for the first time 
clearly and without mystic figures, is this :—What the adepts 
call dead substances are bodies as they exist in nature; living 
substances are those assimilated and magnetized by the will of 
the adept. So that the magnum opus is more than a 
chemical operation : it is a veritable creation of the human 


THE SCIENCE OF HERMES 


3 OT 


Logos initiated into the power of the Logos of God Himself. 
This secret is contained in the thirty-first Semita of the Sepher 
Jetzirah, commented on by the alchemist Rabbi Abraham. 1 
(Ed. Amsterdam, 1642, p. 144.) 

Semita XXXI. 

Vocatur intelligent^ perpetua ; et quare vocatur ita ? Eo 
quod ducit motum solis et lunae juxta constitutionem eorum; 
utrumque in orbe sibi conveniente. 

Rabbi Abraham F . *. D . •. 
dicit: 

Semita trigesima prima vocatur intelligent^ perpetua: et ilia 
ducit solem et lunam et reliquas stpllas et figuras, unum 
quodque in orbe suo, et imperit omnibus creatis juxta dis- 
positionem ad signa et figuras. 

“ The thirty-first path is called perpetual intelligence, and it 
rules the sun and moon with the other stars and signs, each 
in its respective orb. And it distributes what is fitting to all 
created things according to these.” 

This text, it will be seen, is still completely obscure for 
those who do not know the value of each of the thirty-two 
paths. These are the ten numbers and twenty-two hiero- 
glyphical letters of the Kabbalah. The thirty-first is connected 
with which represents the magic lamp or light between the 
horns of Baphomet. It is the kabbalistic sign of Od or the 
Astral Light, with its two poles and equilibrated centre. As 
we have said, in alchemical language the sun signifies gold, 
the moon silver, and the other stars or planets correspond to 
the other metals. The secret fire of the alchemical masters 
was therefore electricity, and this is half of their Great Ar¬ 
canum, but they know how to equilibrate its force by a mag¬ 
netic influence which they concentrated in their Athanor. 

II.—The Universal Medicine. 

Most of our physical maladies are derived from our moral 
diseases, following the universal and magical dogma, and 
by reason of the law of analogies. Any great passion to 
which we abandon ourselves is always a great disease in 

1 See Note 45. 


3° 2 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


preparation. Mortal sins are so named because positively 
and physically they cause death. So soon as the will is 
irrevocably confirmed in the path of absurdity, the man is 
dead, and the rock which he will break on is at hand. It 
is, therefore, true that wisdom preserves and prolongs life. 
Every one knows that a sober, moderately industrious, and 
perfectly regulated life usually lengthens existence. The 
Great Master has said :—“ My flesh is meat indeed, and my 
blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh 
my blood hath everlasting life.” And when the crowd mur¬ 
mured, He added :—“ Here the flesh profiteth nothing ; the 
words which I speak to you are spirit and life.” Therefore 
He meant to say :—“ Drink of my spirit and live by my life.” 
And when He was about to die, He attached the memory of 
His life to the sign of bread, and that of His spirit to the sign 
of wine, and instituted thus the communion of faith, hope, 
and charity. In the same sense, the Hermetic masters say : 
—Make gold potable, and you will have the universal 
medicine ; that is, appropriate truth to your use, let it be the 
spring of which you daily drink, and then you will have within 
you the immortality of the sages. Temperance, tranquillity 
of soul, simplicity of character, calmness and reasonableness 
of will, not only make us happy but strong and healthy. It 
is by becoming good and rational that man makes himself 
immortal; we are all the authors of our destinies, and God 
does not save us without our own concurrence. 

Death has no existence for the wise man, it is a phantom 
made hideous by the ignorance and weakness of the crowd. 
Change is the evidence of movement and movement is life. 
The very corpse would not decompose were it dead ; all 
the molecules which form it remain alive and are in motion 
to disintegrate. And you think that mind is the first to be 
dissipated and lives no more ! You believe that thought and 
love can cease when the grossest matter never perishes. If 
change must be called death, we are daily dying and daily 
being born anew, for our bodies are always changing. Fear, 
therefore, to soil and tear our garments, but fear not to leave 
them when the hour of rest has come. The embalming and 
preservation of bodies is a superstition against nature. It is 
an attempt to create death, it is the enforced immobility of a 


THE SCIENCE OF HERMES 


3°3 


substance of which life has need. But we must not destroy 
or make away with corpses, for nothing is abruptly performed 
by Nature, and we must not run the risk of violently 
breaking the bonds of a soul that is releasing itself. Death 
is never instantaneous, it is accomplished by degrees. So 
long as the blood is not absolutely cold, so long as the nerves 
can be galvanized, the man is not wholly dead, and if none 
of the essential organs of life be destroyed, the spirit may 
be recalled, either accidentally or by a powerful will. A 
philosopher has said that he would reject universal testimony 
rather than believe in a resurrection from the dead, and 
therein he has spoken rashly, for it was on the faith of 
universal evidence that he believed in the impossibility of 
resurrection. 

Let us now be bold enough to assert that resurrection is 
possible, and even occurs more often than is imagined. How 
many persons whose dissolutions have been judicially and 
scientifically established have been subsequently discovered 
in their coffins dead, it is true, but they have first come back 
to life and have bitten through their hands to open the arteries 
and escape by a new death from unendurable agonies ? A 
doctor will tell us that such persons were in a lethargy. 
What is lethargy, however ? The etherization or stupor 
produced by chloroform is a real lethargy which sometimes 
ends in actual death, when the soul, rejoiced at its temporary 
liberation, makes an effort of the will to depart finally, which 
is possible with those who have conquered hell, that is, with 
those whose moral strength is greater than that of astral 
attraction. Thus resurrection is possible only for elementary 
souls, and these above all are exposed to awake unwillingly in 
the tomb. Great men and true sages are never buried alive. 

The body is a garment of the soul, to which the latter is 
joined by sensibility, and when sensibility ceases it is a sure 
sign that the soul is departing. When the garment is com¬ 
pletely worn out or seriously and irreparably torn, it quits it 
and never reassumes it. But when, by some accident, it 
leaves this garment without it being worn or destroyed, the 
soul, in certain cases, can take it up again, either by its own 
effort or by the help of another will stronger and more active 
than its own, 


3°4 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Death is neither the end of life nor the beginning of im¬ 
mortality, it is the continuation and transformation of life. 
Now, a transformation being always a progress, few dead 
persons consent to return to this life, and reassume the 
garment they have just rejected. This makes resurrection 
one of the most difficult achievements of supreme initiation, 
and its success is never certain, but should be regarded as 
accidental or unexpected. To resuscitate a dead person, 
the most powerful chains of attraction which can bind it to 
the form it has quitted must be suddenly and energetically 
brought together. It is necessary, therefore, to be previously 
acquainted with this chain, then to seize it, then to produce a 
will-effort strong enough to rejoin it instantaneously and with 
irresistible power. The method of procedure is indicated in 
Scripture. The prophet Elias and St Paul employed it with 
success. The dead person must be magnetized by placing 
our feet upon their feet, our mouth against their mouth, then 
concentrating the whole will, and calling the soul which has 
escaped for a long time towards us with all the mental 
caresses and affection of which we are capable. If the 
operator can inspire the soul of the defunct with great love or 
respect, if in the thought which he magnetically transmits to 
it, the thaumaturge can persuade it that life is still necessary 
to it, and that happy days are still in store for it here below, 
it will certainly return. 

It suffices sometimes to take the person by the hand and 
raise them quickly, calling them in a loud voice. This 
method, which commonly succeeds in swoons, may be also 
efficacious in death, when the magnetist who exercises it is 
endowed with a powerfully sympathetic speech and possesses 
what may be called the eloquence of voice. He must also 
perform the work by a great outburst of faith. 

In the same way, it is the faith as well as the knowledge 
of the doctor which is the real virtue of remedies, and the only 
true efficacious medicine is thaumaturgy. So occult thera¬ 
peutists are independent of all common medication. They 
chiefly employ words, insufflations, and communicate by the 
will a varied virtue to such simple substances as water, oil, 
wine, camphor, and salt. The water of the homoeopathists, 
is a veritably magnetized and enchanted water which works 


THE SCIENCE OF HERMES 


305 


by means of faith. The tonic substances added in almost 
infinitesimal quantities are consecrations and, as it were, signs 
of the doctor’s will. 

What is vulgarly called charlatanism is a great means of 
real success in medicine, if such charlatanry be skilful enough 
to inspire great confidence and to form a circle of belief. In 
medicine more than all it is faith which saves. There is 
scarcely a village without its compounder of occult medicines, 
and such persons have almost everywhere and always achieved 
an incomparably greater success than the doctors approved 
by the faculty. The remedies they prescribe are often 
bizarre or ridiculous, and succeed better on account of it, 
because they exact and obtain more faith on the part of 
subjects and operators. 

Insufflation is one of the most important practices of occult 
medicine, because it is a perfect sign of life-transfer. To 
inspire, in fact, means to breathe on some one or something, 
and we already know, by the one dogma of Hermes, that it 
is the virtue of things which has created words, and that an 
exact proportion exists between ideas and words, which are 
the first forms and verbal realizations of ideas. Accordingly 
as the breathing is warm or cold, it is attractive or repulsive. 
The warm breathing corresponds to positive electricity, and 
the cold to negative electricity. Electrical and nervous 
animals fear the cold breathing, as we may ascertain by 
breathing on a cat whose familiarities are importunate. By 
fixedly regarding a lion or tiger, and breathing in their face, 
we should so stupefy them that we should force them to recoil 
before us. Warm and prolonged insufflation restores circu¬ 
lation, cures rheumatic pains, re-establishes equilibrium in the 
humours of the body, and dissipates weariness. Coming 
from a good and sympathetic person, it is a universal com¬ 
poser. Cold insufflation appeases those pains which are 
caused by congestions and fluidic accumulations. These two 
breathings must therefore be alternated, by observing the 
polarity of the human organism, and by acting in an opposite 
manner on the poles, subjected, one after another, to a 
contrary magnetism. Thus, to cure an inflamed eye, the 
healthy one should be gently and warmly insufflated, then 
cold insufflations must be practised at a distance on the 

u 


30 6 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


irritated organ in exact proportion with the warm ones. 
Magnetic passes themselves act like a breathing by the tran¬ 
spiration and radiation of the interior air, which is all phos¬ 
phorescent with vital light; slow passes are a warm breathing 
which collects and raises the spirits, rapid ones are a cold 
breathing which disperses the energies and neutralizes tend¬ 
encies to congestion. The warm insufflation should be made 
either transversely or from beneath upwards; the cold insuf¬ 
flation is more efficacious when directed from above down¬ 
wards. 

All the power of the occultist doctor is in the consciousness 
of his will, and all his art consists in producing faith in his 
patient. Everything is possible to him who believes, as the 
Master has told us. He must dominate his subject by his 
presence, tone, and gestures, must inspire confidence by 
something of paternal manner, and divert him by some 
pleasant and cheerful talk. Rabelais, who was more magician 
than he seemed, chose pantagruelism as his special panacea. 
He made his patients laugh, and all the remedies they sub¬ 
sequently used succeeded the better in consequence; he 
established between himself and them a magnetic current, by 
means of which he transmitted to them his assurance and 
good temper ; he flattered them in his prefaces by calling them 
his most illustrious and cherished patients, and he dedicated 
his works to them. So we are convinced that Gargantua and 
Pantagruel have cured more ill-humours, more dispositions to 
folly, more atra-bilious manias in that epoch of religious 
animosities and civil wars, than all the medical faculty could 
then ascertain and study. 

Occult medicine is essentially sympathetic. A reciprocal 
affection, or at least good-will, must be established between 
doctor and patient. Syrups and juleps have little inherent 
virtue, they are what the opinion common to agent and patient 
makes them ; so homoeopathy suppresses them without grave 
inconvenience. Oil and wine combined either with salt or 
camphor would be sufficient for the healing of all wounds, and 
for all exterior frictions or soothing applications. Oil and 
wine are the pre-eminent medicaments of evangelical tradition. 
It is the balm of the Samaritan, and in the Apocalypse the 
prophet, describing the great plagues, prays the avenging 


THE SCIENCE OF HERMES 


3°7 


powers to spare the oil and wine, that is, to leave a hope and 
a cure for so many wounds. Extreme unction among the 
primitive Christians, and in the mind of the apostle St James, 
who has transmitted the precept in his epistle to the faithful 
of the whole world, was the pure and simple practice of the 
Master’s traditional medicine. “ Is any man sick among you ? 
Let him call in the priests of the church and let them pray 
over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” 
This divine therapeutic art was progressively lost, and Extreme 
Unction has come to be regarded as a religious formality 
necessary in the hour of death . 1 Nevertheless, the thau- 
maturgic virtue of Holy Oils cannot be wholly consigned to 
oblivion by the traditional dogma, and its memory is retained 
in that passage of the Catechism which refers to Extreme 
Unction. 


III.— Renewed Youth. 

The universal principle of life is a substantial movement, 
or a substance eternally moved and motive, invisible and 
impalpable, in a volatile state, and it is materially manifested 
when fixed by the phenomena of polarization. This substance 
is indefectible, incorruptible, and immortal, but its form 
manifestations are continually changed by the perpetuity of 
motion. Thus, all dies because all lives, and if we could 
immortalize a form, we should arrest motion and create the 
only true death. To imprison a soul for ever in a mummified 
human body, such would be the horrible solution of the 
paradox of pretended immortality in the same body and on 
the same earth. Everything is regenerated by the universal 
solvent, the power of which is consecrated in the quintessence, 
that is, in the equilibrating centre of the two-fold polarity. 
The four elements of the ancients are the four polar forces of 
the universal magnet, and it is in their exact proportion that 
we must seek the universal medicine of the body, as that of 
the soul is offered us by religion in Him who eternally 
sacrifices Himself on the Cross for the salvation of the world. 

1 And yet the forgiveness of sin was in some way attached to the 
ceremony or to the prayer of faith which accompanied it, and evidently 
was the life of the ceremony.—T r. 


3°8 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


The Key of the Great Work is this universal medicine of souls 
and bodies ; it is the nimbus of Adam and the sceptre of 
Solomon ; it is the earthly realization of the Sanctum Regnum. 

The great magical means of preserving the youth of the 
body is to prevent the soul from growing old, by carefully main¬ 
taining its primeval freshness of sentiments and thoughts, 
which the corrupt world calls illusions, but we name the 
primitive reflections of eternal truth. To believe in bliss on 
earth, to believe in friendship and love, to believe in a maternal 
Providence which takes account of all our steps and recom¬ 
penses all our tears, is to be completely duped, says the 
corrupted world, and it fails to perceive that the dupe is he 
who thinks himself to be strong when depriving himself of all 
the delights of the soul. To believe in good, in the moral 
order, is to possess good, and this is why the Saviour of the 
world promised the Kingdom of Heaven to those who 
become as little children. Infancy is the age of faith; the 
child as yet knows nothing of life, and so is he glowing with 
confiding immortality. Can he doubt of self-devotion, tender¬ 
ness, friendship, love, when he is in the arms of his mother ? 
Become children in heart and you will keep young in body ! 

The realities of God and Nature infinitely surpass all the 
dreams of men both in goodness and beauty. Thus the 
biases are those who have never known how to be happy, and 
the disillusionized prove, by their disgust, that they have only 
drunk at muddy springs. To enjoy even the sensual pleasures 
of life, we must possess moral sense, and those who calumniate 
existence have certainly abused it. Supreme magic directs 
man to the purest moral code. Vel sanctum invenit, vet 
sanctum facit , an adept has said, for it shews us that to be 
happy even in this world we must be holy. To be holy ! 
something said with ease, but how shall we obtain faith when 
we believe no longer ? How recover the taste for virtue in a 
heart depraved by vice ? ... It is a question of recurrence 
to the four maxims of science—to know, to dare, to will, and 
to keep silent. Silence must be imposed on our disgusts, we 
must study duty and begin practising it as if we loved it. 
You are a sceptic, for example, and you wish to be a Christian. 
Perform the exercises of a Christian, pray regularly, using 
Christian formulae, approach the sacraments assuming faith, 


THE SCIENCE OF HERMES 


3°9 


and faith will come. By analogous exercises, a fool, if he 
willed it persistently, might become a man of understanding. 

By changing the habits of the soul we assuredly change those 
of the body. Things which contribute above all to make us old 
by deforming us are rancorous and bitter thoughts, unfavour¬ 
able judgments on others, the fury of wounded pride and of 
ill-satisfied passions. A benevolent and mild philosophy 
would save us from all these evils. If we closed our eyes on 
our neighbour’s faults, taking account of his good qualities 
only, we should find goodness and kindness everywhere. The 
most perverse man has his good points, and softens when we 
know how to take him. Had we nothing in common with 
human vices we should not even perceive them. Friendship 
and the self-abnegation which it inspires are found even in the 
prisons and galleys. The abominable Lacenaire faithfully 
returned money when it was lent to him and many times 
performed acts of generosity and benevolence. No one is 
absolutely bad or absolutely good. “No one is good but 
God,” said the best of masters. 

What we mistake for the zeal of virtue in ourselves is often 
only a secret self-love, dissimulated jealousy, and a haughty 
instinct of contradiction. “ When we see manifest disorders 
and scandalous sinners,” say the authors of mystical theology, 
“ believe such persons are subjected by God to greater trials 
than we are, that certainly, or at least very probably, we are 
not nearly so worthy as they, and that we should do far worse 
in their place.” 

Peace, peace! This is the supreme soul-good, to give us 
which Christ came into the world. “ Glory to God in the 
highest and peace on earth to men of goodwill ! ” The early 
Christian fathers reckoned sadness as an eighth deadly sin. 
In fact, the very repentance of the Christian is not a sadness 
but a consolation, joy and triumph. “ I desired evil and I 
desire it no longer, I was dead and am alive.” The father of 
the prodigal son has killed the fatted calf, for his son has 
returned, and what can the prodigal do? Weep, feel a little 
confused, but above all be joyful. Folly and wickedness are 
the only sad things in the world. As soon as we are delivered 
from them, let us laugh and utter cries of joy, for we are saved 
and all the dead who love us rejoice in Heaven. 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


3 ro 

We all bear within us a principle of death and a principle 
of immortality. Death is the animal, and the animal ever pro¬ 
duces folly . 1 God loves not fools, for His Divine Spirit is 
named the Spirit of Intelligence. Folly is atoned for by 
suffering and enslavement. The rod is made for beasts. 

1 “ La mort Lest la bete et la bete produit toujours la betisel The play 
on words in the original cannot be rendered into English.—T r. 


PART VIII 

KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 1 


I.—Spirits in the Bible. 

Some day men will come to understand the Bible, and will 
realize what treasures are concealed, belonging to primitive 
science, under its innumerable symbols and figures; they 
will learn, for example, that Genesis is not merely the history 
of a world’s formation, but is the exposition of those eternal 
laws which preside over the incessant and ever renewed 
creation of beings; they will decipher those hieroglyphs 
which were covered with ridicule by Voltaire; they will 
understand why it is that a cherub, in other words, a bull 
—that of Europa and of Mithra—defended the gate of the 
garden of science with a pointed sword. At present these 
allegories are veiled, and the grand monuments of hieratic 
antiquity stand enveloped in their solitude and their silence, 
like the great pyramids, which follow the eye speaking 
nothing that is definite to thought, and without our positively 
knowing whether they are scientific monuments or sepulchres. 

Among the books of the Bible there is one which over¬ 
whelms us by the magnificence of its poetic form and by 
its mournful profundities ; we refer to that of Job, possibly 
the most ancient of all, but indisputably the most remarkable 
synthesis which has come down to us of the philosophical 
and magical doctrine of old initiation. This work explains 
the origin and accounts for the existence of evil; its 
allegorical nature is transparent; the very names of its 
characters shew that they are types and not individuals. 

1 See Note 46. 


3 « 



3 12 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Job, whose name signifies “ the afflicted one,” is visited 
in his desolation by three false friends, who, under the 
pretence of consoling him, increase and distress him further. 
One is Eliphaz, the zealot of God, or the puritan of his 
period; the second is Bildad, the devotee of old ideas; 
the third is Zophar, the gloomy and ill-disposed philosopher. 
They visit Job in the land of Hur, which name signifies 
“council,” and with the unwitting ferocity of mania they 
unite to drive him into despair. The first to speak is 
Eliphaz, and as he represents proud credulity, he cites the 
testimony of a spirit in support of his words. He narrates 
how some unknown being, whose face he could not see, 
has discoursed to him, causing fear and trembling to come 
upon him, so that the hair of his flesh stood up, while a 
slight breath murmuring vague words passed before his face. 
He strained his ears eagerly and collected the broken 
threads of this whispering of a shadow. There we have 
the medium of old days, and reading this passage, we see 
that the author of the book of Job was admirably acquainted 
with the disposition of visionaries and the characteristic 
attributes of visions. The book of Job is referred to Moses, 
and not without reason, for the beauty of this poem yields 
nothing to the hymns of the great prophet of the Hebrews ; 
there is the same inspiration, the same grandeur in the 
images. But whether or not it be the work of Moses, this 
sacred work is the production of a grand hierophant, and 
therein the highest science is found in union with the most 
sublime aspirations of faith. Its words should therefore be 
studied and weighed with care, and let us observe at the 
outset that the man of visions, the medium as he would 
be termed at this day, is the most mournful and despairing 
of Job’s three friends. His doctrines make virtue doubtful 
and lead the great majority of men to annihilation or hell. 
Now, who has inspired him with these despairing dogmas ? A 
spirit whom he knew not, whose words have been gathered 
up and commented on by his nocturnal terrors. Weigh all 
the circumstances ; the time is the darkest hour of the night, 
when the silence of nature disposes souls to fear, when the 
waking state becomes vague, when the soul floats among 
the first mists of sleep, when the reason is already in fetters. 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


3 T 3 


At such an hour fear seized the visionary, apparently with 
no cause; his disturbed blood sets towards the heart, the 
extremities become cold, he trembles as if with fever; a 
shiver passes over his body; his hair and beard rise up, 
and it is in this state, which goes before hallucination, 
that he believes himself to perceive the passing of a spirit. 
There is a phantom dimly limned in the darkness ; he seeks 
but cannot see the visage of the figure; and he hears, 
as in the depth of his own heart, a voice like a soft breathing. 
The natural phenomenon is here unerringly characterized ; 
it is a nightmare of the first sleep; it is the soul of the 
dreamer occasioning fear to itself. He distinguishes with 
affright the nocturnal and far away echo of his own thoughts, 
and with laborious attention he formulates them in words 
of despair. In vain, says he, does man strive to be just 
in God’s sight; God finds perversity ev6n in the heart of 
His angels. An unintelligent flock, humanity surges round 
the abyss, and all must be precipitated for ever into the 
yawning night of death. The creature is a blemish upon 
heaven, and God makes haste to wipe it out; all pass and 
die without finding wisdom. Thus night preaches unto 
night, and death foretells death. The unknown nightmare 
reveals nothing but ignorance and devotes its believer to 
a nightmare that is eternal. Preserve us, O Lord, says 
David, from the terror which walketh in the night! 

This slight breathing, this scarcely audible muttering, this 
spectre without face, are a graphic characterization of illusion 
and error ; they are the next thing to nothingness and silence, 
the mind which seems whispering as it skims the stiff folds 
of the shroud, reminiscence extinguished in the shifting and 
advancing tide of dream ; man borne away thereby no longer 
knows whether he is awake or sleeping; he reasons during 
his sleep, and when he wakes to-morrow will speak as if he 
were yet dreaming. The skill with which the author of the 
book Of Job sketches the character of the superstitious person, 
represented by Eliphaz, cannot be sufficiently admired; a 
nocturnal terror forms his introduction to knowledge, which 
is consequently nothing but discouragement and apprehension, 
black as night, and blind and faceless like the phantom. It 
is the pride of distraction admiring itself in its madness, and 


3 r 4 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


finding consolation in despair by the bitter pleasure of driving 
others to desperation. All those whom misconstrued religion 
hds rendered criminal have begun by being visionaries. 
Jacques Clement and Ravaillac were haunted by unknown 
shadows and heard the small voice of Eliphaz during their 
vigils. The voice which whispers “ Slay! ” and that which 
hisses, “ Despair and die ! ” both issue from the tomb. But 
this tomb is that of our reason, and the dead return only in 
our dreams; hence the condition of mediomania is an ex¬ 
tension of dream, and somnambulism accompanied by every 
variety of its ecstacies. Investigate the phenomena of sleep 
and all the mysteries of spiritism will be understood. For 
this reason do the Mosaic and Christian laws alike condemn 
the spirits of Python and those who divine by Ob. Let 
us elucidate these expressions : Python is a word which 
Hebrew commentators have borrowed to signify the great 
astral serpent, the unintelligent vital fire, the fatal vortex of 
physical life, that which encircles the earth devouring its own 
tail, which is pierced on all sides by the arrows of the sun, in 
other words, by its rays; the serpent which tempted Eve and 
bent its head beneath the foot of the regenerated woman, 
though seeking always to bite her heel. Ob is the passive 
light, for the Hebrew Kabbalists gave three names to this 
universal substance, the agent of creation, assuming all forms, 
while equalizing itself by the counterpoise of two forces. 
When active, it is called Od; in its passive aspect it is Ob; 
in equilibration, it is termed Aour. Od is written by the 
letters Vau and Daleth , signifying Love and Power; Ob by 
Vau and Beth , signifying Love and Weakness, or blind 
appetite ; Aour by Aleph, Vau and Resch, signifying the 
principle of regenerative love. Those who divine by Ob 
are therefore the interpreters of fatality; by consulting it 
we consent to fatality; by selecting it as an oracle we 
abandon ourselves thereto; hence we give hostages to death 
and enfeeble our free will. Those who co-operate in this 
divination are like quacks who sell poisons publicly, and, 
following the custom of his country and his time, Moses 
was not too severe when he condemned them to death. 
When Reichenbach termed the astral light Od, he disin¬ 
terred one of the true names of the universal light, but by 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


3i5 


its generalization he did not apply it with exactitude. Od 
is the directed and even the directing light; it is the astral 
light exalted to the condition of the light of glory. As to 
the somnambulistic fluid, this should be termed Ob, and 
we are compelled to acknowledge that our genuine somnam¬ 
bulists, when they are not directed by a powerful magnetizer 
in Od, are diviners by Ob, or by the spirits of Python 
mentioned in Holy Scripture. Those who consult them 
are guilty therefore of that imprudence or impiety which 
drove Saul, when abandoned by the Deity, into the cavern 
of the pythoness of Endor. Some commentators, including 
S. Methodius, surnamed Eubulius, bishop of Tyre at the 
beginning of the fourth century, have considered the Witch 
of Endor as a skilful intriguer who deceived the credulity 
of the King of Israel. She feigns first of all not to recognize 
the monarch, and then, suddenly, as if informed of the 
fact by her demon, she falls at the feet of Saul. The device 
is successful, the mad prince reassures her, and shows himself 
disposed to put faith in her by commanding her to evoke 
Samuel. The pythoness thereupon takes refuge in innumer¬ 
able contortions, and falls heavily to the earth. What seest 
thou ? asks Saul, trembling from head to foot. I see gods 
coming forth out of the earth, or I see the power of the earth 
ascending. Again, what seest thou ? I see an old man 
wrapped in a cloak. It is Samuel, cries the credulous King. 
Then the sorceress, doubtless secretly devoted to David, 
causes a doleful voice to issue from her stomach: this is 
Samuel pouring forth reproaches and menaces. Saul, more 
dead than alive, henceforth refuses food and drink; he is 
conquered beforehand; he goes forth to battle as if to 
execution; the Philistines surround him on Mount Gilboa, 
and he falls on his sword in place of defending himself. Did 
he not leave his freewill and his reason behind him in the 
cave of the sorceress? Despoiled Monarch, incapable of 
reigning henceforth, man no longer worthy to lead men, he 
who pronounced the penalty of death upon sorcerers and 
those who consulted them, he even shews himself a king at 
least in his death, and performs a final act of justice in 
destroying himself! 

It was properly repugnant to the learned bishop of Tyre 


3 l6 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


to admit that the peace of the grave could be troubled by the 
sacrilegious evocations of a criminal woman; he remembered, 
moreover, those decisive words of the Gospel in the parable 
of Dives : Chaos magnum firmatum est. The great chaos 
is closed, so that those who are above can pass below no 
longer, on which subject our wise friend, the lamented 
M. Louis Lucas, once made a highly judicious remark. 
“Nature,” he said, “opens all its doors widely to life, but 
takes care to close them behind it, so that it can never go 
back. Observe the sap in plants, the nourishing juices in the 
alembic of the intestines, the blood in the veins; a regular 
movement drives them all forward, and when they have passed 
through the conduits they are checked and stayed of them¬ 
selves. Living beings, who abide in a higher sphere,” he 
added, “can no more relapse to ours than the child can 
return into its mother’s womb.” We think as he did, and do 
in no way believe that the soul of Samuel could come forth 
from the other world to again put a curse on the unfortunate 
Saul. For us the pythoness of Endor was like the ecstatics 
of Cahagnet; by means of somnambulism she placed herself 
in communication with the darksome soul of the King of 
Israel, and evoked its phantoms. From the depth of the 
conscience of that destroyer of priests and prophets, and not 
from a hole in the earth, rose the bloody spectre of Samuel, 
and when the sibyl in the tones of a ventriloquist enunciated 
anathemas and menaces, she read what was written by 
remorse in the inmost thoughts of him who consulted her. 


II.— Spirits in the Bible ( continued ) —The Resurrec¬ 
tion of the Dead—The Son of the Sunamite— 
The Tomb of Eliseus. 

The old Hebrews believed, like the moderns, in the 
immortality of the soul, but Moses at the same time does not 
speak of it in the Pentateuch. As a fact, this doctrine was 
reserved for the initiates, and to recover it in all its splendour 
we must penetrate the sanctuaries of the Kabbalah. The 
great work of Moses was to lead forth his people from 
idolatry; he knew that faith in the immortality of the soul, 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


3*7 


when badly illuminated, ends in the cultus of ancestors; he 
desired not the Hebrews to be Chinese, the people of 
Abraham and Jacob to carry out of Egypt the fetichism of 
corpses, nor to supply the temple of the living God with 
a substructure peopled by mummies. The preservation of 
dead bodies is, in fact, an outrage against nature, for it is 
an artificial perpetuation of death. Moses feared also to 
encourage necromancy, and seemed to foresee from afar the 
epidemic of talking tables and rapping spirits. To over¬ 
excite the imagination of multitudes is an unwise thing, and 
at a later period Christianity did not escape this danger. 
The dream of heaven caused earth to be unreasonably 
neglected, and men failed to adequately realize that, accord¬ 
ing to the saying of the Master, the will of God should be 
done on earth as it is in heaven. That which is below is like 
that which is above, says Hermes Trismegistus, and that 
which is above is like that which is below. When barbarism 
subsists upon earth, it obtains also in the heaven which men 
make unto themselves, in witness whereof I would cite the 
fanaticism of the middle ages and the God of inquisitors. 

The religion of Moses was reason without tenderness, and 
Christianity at first was tenderness without reason. We must 
forgive much to those who have loved much. To adore the 
dead who are dear to us is an error undoubtedly, but is it an 
unpardonable crime ? For us, furthermore, there are no dead, 
all being alive. Our very relics, the fragments of bones which 
are the source of such horror to judaistic puritanism, are no 
longer remnants of corpses. Re-animated by common faith, 
bedewed by gentle tears of hope, warmed by the charity of 
all, they are seeds of resurrection and pledges of eternal life. 
Allow something, ye Israelites, to the holy extravagance of 
love, and ye will lead us back more readily to the severity of 
dogma by the indulgence of reason ! To believe in the resur¬ 
rection of the dead is to believe in immortality. Now, the 
Hebrews did believe in the resurrection of the dead; Elijah 
raised up the son of the widow of Zarephath, Eliseus that of the 
Sunamite, and a dead person cast by chance into the sepulchre 
of the latter prophet came to life at the touch of his bones. 
The two resurrections of the son of the widow and the son of 
the Sunamite seem to reproduce each other somewhat too 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


3* 8 

closely. However this may be, the narrative of the latter con¬ 
tains details of magnetic operations which are in all respects 
worthy of remark. The child of the Sunamite died of a 
cerebral congestion, following on sunstroke. Eliseus first of 
all sends his servant, to whom he entrusts his own wand, 
instructing him to extend it towards the face of the child and 
to touch him therewith. Giezi departs with the staff, but, 
whether by want of skill or by want of faith, his operation fails, 
and he returns. Thereupon, Eliseus proceeds himself to the 
child and seeks to revivify him by incubation and insufflation : 
he places his face on the face, his feet • beneath the feet, his 
hands on the hands; then he breaks off and begins to walk 
up and down the apartment, no doubt to recover power, after 
which he recommences his magnetic incubation, and the boy 
returns to life. We have said elsewhere that the resurrection 
of the dead does not seem to us impossible, so long as no vital 
organ has been destroyed. As a fact, nature accomplishes 
nothing by leaps and bounds, and natural death is invariably 
preceded by a state which connects with lethargy, a torpor 
that it is possible to overcome by a great shock or the magnet¬ 
ism of a powerful will, which also explains the resurrection of 
the dead person cast upon the bones of Eliseus; the man was 
probably in that condition which commonly goes before death. 
Those who bore him were alarmed at the appearance of a band 
of robbers of the desert, and they threw the corpse by accident 
in the open sepulchre of the prophet, to place it beyond reach 
of the unbelievers. The soul of the dead man was doubtless 
floating in the lower regions of the atmosphere, and only im¬ 
perfectly detached from his mortal remains; to this soul the 
terror of his family was communicated sympathetically; it 
shared the fear lest its remains should be profaned by the 
uncircumcised, and returned violently into the body to raise 
and save it; the resurrection was attributed to contact with 
the bones of Eliseus, and the worship of relics dates logically 
from this period. It is certain that the Hebrews, who regard 
as sacred the book which narrates this history, should not 
disapprove the veneration which Catholics pay to the bones 
and other memorials of their saints. Why, for example, should 
the blood of St Januarius possess less virtue than the skeleton 
of Eliseus ? 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


III. —Spirits in the Gospel—Demons, Possessed 
Persons, and Apparitions. 

Jesus calls Satan the prince of this world, he is therefore 
a power which holds sway upon earth. It is not a spiritual 
power, for in such case it would exclude that of God. Jesus 
said that He beheld it fall from heaven like lightning or 
under the form of lightning; it is therefore a material power 
analogous to electricity. Jesus says also that Satan is a liar 
like his father, because the father of Satan is the spirit of 
falsehood which ascribes personality to error. To make use 
of the evil forces of nature is to engender Satan. To conceive 
all things without God is to conceive Satan. The devil is 
a headless pantheism; he is man with a goat’s head; he 
is animal instinct set in the place of ruling reason; he is 
the shadow which denies the body, the pot repudiating the 
potter, the nightmare and the absurdity of reason denying the 
absurdity of faith; he is chance confronting law, grimace 
insulting beauty, the void crying: I am God. Satan is folly, 
and those who are possessed by the demon are fools. One is 
dumb, the other rends his garments and hides in tombs ; yet 
another casts himself into fire here and into water there, and 
seems the prey of suicidal mania. What are these symptoms ? 
They belong to mental disease, and Jesus, also attributing to 
Satan, that is, to misdirected electricity, the majority of other 
maladies, says in reference to a deformed woman : Behold 
this daughter of Abraham, who has been bound by Satan ! 
Satan thus becomes the personification even of physical evil; 
to be bound by Satan here means obviously to be bound or 
doubled up by a nervous or rheumatic affection. Moreover, 
the serpent of Genesis could not be the Satan of Milton. It 
was the most subtle and most wily of beasts, says the sacred 
text, and for its punishment God ordained that it should walk 
on its belly and should eat dust—penalties which in no way 
correspond to the traditional flames of hell. It is certain, 
furthermore, that the real, as distinguished from the allegori¬ 
cal, serpent crawled previously to the sin of Eve, and has at 
no time eaten dust; we are therefore dealing with allegory; 
we are dealing with that astral fire which does creep, which 
does consume, even with that terrestrial fire which feeds 


3 20 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


physical life by inflicting death. It is the same with that 
Satan who is represented as the cause of prostration and 
paralysis in the aged daughters of Abraham. What also are 
we to think of that legion of devils who, when driven from the 
body of a demoniac, asked leave, as a favour, to seek refuge 
in a flock of swine, which immediately became furious and 
plunged headlong into the lake of Tiberias ? Is it not 
obviously a Jewish parable intended to shew that the swine is 
an unclean animal ? If such histories are to be taken literally, 
Voltaire had good reason to deride them, but we know that 
the letter kills, while the spirit alone gives life. Yet we do 
not say on this account that the fact is itself impossible. The 
madness of dogs can be communicated to men, and why 
should not the insanity of men, in some of its furious forms, 
be also communicable to animals ? But to affirm that fallen 
angels, that pure spirits who have inclined the penalty of 
hell, can be eased by drowning in the bodies of swine; that 
the Saviour of the world, the supreme reason made flesh, could 
consent to this hideous and ridiculous mischief; it is this that 
the most ordinary good sense is unable to admit. Beneath 
this apparently revolting narrative there is evidently something 
concealed. 

When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, says the 
Saviour, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and 
findeth none. Then saith he, I will return into my house 
from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth 
it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh 
with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, 
and they enter in and dwell there : and the last state of that 
man is worse than the first. If this symbolical discourse 
must be understood in the sense of the demonomaniacs—by 
his cures of the possessed, Jesus himself performed evil actions, 
since, according to his own doctrine, he thereby exposed them 
to an obsession seven times more cruel. But the reference 
is to mental diseases which are frequently aggravated by the 
attempt to cure them. If you dispel one delusion from the 
mind of a fool, it will be replaced speedily by seven others 
more insane than the first. For this reason Jesus concealed 
from the multitude the exalted truths of his doctrine, and 
revealed them only in parables to a small circle of initiates. 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


321 


He feared the impure spirit which is named legion or multi¬ 
tude. I will, said He, that seeing they shall not see, and 
hearing they shall not understand, lest otherwise they should 
be converted and live. Alas, He foresaw the religious wars, 
massacres, and pyres! He beheld from afar the Roman 
Empire sinking in the blood of persecutions, and the piety 
which prays and pardons put to death by rancorous fanati¬ 
cism. He drove out a dumb devil—it was the worship of 
idols, and He beheld the approach of seven gifted with tongues 
—the seven deadly sins exalted into doctors of the Church. 
Hence He pledged himself to silence when perchance He had 
said already too much. So also, when He was betrayed and 
denied by His own, calumniated and cursed by the priests, 
accused before the judges, delivered up to the clamours of 
the vile multitude, who yelled for His death, He wrapped him¬ 
self in the most absolute silence, replied not to Pilate, spake 
nothing to Herod. What indeed could He say to them, and 
to what purpose? They were unworthy and incapable of 
understanding. When at length He had drained the chalice 
of ingratitude to the dregs, when He knew himself to be dying 
amidst horrible torment, without having accomplished any¬ 
thing for men whom He loved so much, save to make them 
more culpable and more wicked, His heart broke, He seemed 
to doubt himself, and He uttered that terrible cry: My God ! 
My God ! why hast Thou forsaken me ? 

When He expired, says the Gospel, the earth trembled, the 
sun was darkened, the veil of the temple was rent from top to 
bottom, the stones were shattered, the graves opened, the dead 
came forth and appeared to many. Were these things to be 
taken literally, we ought to find some mention of the formid¬ 
able event in history. The quaking of the earth would be 
universal, the darkening of the sun would be more than a 
simple eclipse. What rocks were rent ? If all, then cities 
would have fallen in ruins ; if some, then which ? and why 
these more than those ? If the dead came out of their graves 
what was their condition ? Were they skeletons or in a state 
of putrefaction ? or had they new bodies ? If the latter, then 
it was a veritable resurrection. But Scripture calls Jesus 
Christ the first-fruits of them that are dead, that is, the first 
of the risen, and at this time Jesus was but just dead. Here 


x 


3 22 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


the letter does not bear a moment’s examination; we must 
have recourse to the spirit, in other words, to allegory. As a 
fact, when Jesus Christ died the old world did tremble, nor 
did it recover from the shock, and the Roman colossus 
crumbled piece by piece. The veil of the temple was rent, 
that is, the most secret mysteries of the Jewish religion were 
revealed, the divine humanity or the human divinity. The 
sun was darkened, in other words, the old worships of the 
east, which regarded the sun as the most perfect image of God, 
were despoiled of virtue. A living sun had appeared upon 
earth, it had set, only to rise anew, and the days of the soul 
had found their luminary. The rocks were split, that is to say, 
the hardest hearts could not withstand the gentle violence of 
the grand sacrifice. The graves opened of themselves, for 
death had just given up the keys of the eternal gates. The 
dead themselves rose, or seemed to be resuscitated, beforehand 
because the victorious death of the greatest of victims had 
inflicted on death itself a mortal blow, and the immortality of 
the soul in a sense became visible on earth. Such is the true, 
the sole possible and reasonable sense of the sacred words, 
literally accepted by innumerable children, among whom must 
be included the imbecile theologians of the middle ages. 

As regards the apparitions of Jesus Christ Himself, we do 
not touch thereon, for they belong exclusively to the domain 
of faith. We will merely observe that they in no sense bear 
out the ideas of spiritism, for when Jesus Christ appeared, 
it was not as one dead but alive; not in spirit but in flesh 
and blood was He found in the midst of His disciples, 
whom He invited to touch Him, of whom He asked food, 
and in the midst of whom He, as a fact, both ate and 
drank. St Thomas handled Him, finding a palpable and 
real body, and yet this body passed through closed doors. 
These are things of the world beyond, which certainly 
nothing here can explain; the palpable real body, the body 
of flesh and bone, the body which accepts nourishment in 
the shape of bread and of honey, appears and vanishes 
like a phantom. Here there is evidently a mystery. The 
first Christians, driven to concealment, had their parables 
and their occultism; they wrote to be understood only by 
initiates. The history of the apparition to the two travellers 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


323 


of Emmaiis, will cast some light upon the darkness. They 
were disciples of Jesus, faring near the borough of Emmaiis, 
and conversing sadly on the untimely death of their Master. 
An unknown person joined them, reproached their sadness, 
explained the Scriptures, and recalled the words uttered by 
the Master before He died : Ye shall be one with Me, even 
as I and My Father are one. He who sees Me has seen the 
Father, and he who shall behold you shall behold Me. He 
who shall hearken unto you, the same shall hear Me, and when 
two or three shall be met together in My name, there shall I 
be in the midst of you.—So speaking, they reached the inn, 
the traveller took bread, blessed and broke it among them, as 
Jesus Christ had done at the Last Supper; then the eyes 
of the two disciples were opened; they recognised that, 
according to His word, Christ was truly in the midst of them, 
they understood that He was risen, and ever visible to His 
own, ever present in His Church. They communicated from 
the hand of Jesus Christ Himself, and after the communion 
they saw Him no more. Here the whole mystery of the priest¬ 
hood is expressed with reserve, and in a veiled manner. The 
priest who celebrates Mass is really Jesus Christ in the faith 
of the spectators, and the proof is that the priest when pro¬ 
nouncing the sacramental words does not say : This is the 
body of Christ, but actually with the Master : This is My 
body. 1 Then does the believer behold the priest no more, 
but Jesus Christ administering His body, and he really receives 
the sacred body of Jesus Christ; but, after the sacrifice, Jesus 
has disappeared, and no one concerns themselves with the 
poor cure who returns to the sacristy reciting in an undertone 
the verses of his Te Deum. 

In the Church of Saint-Gervais at Paris, there is a mural 
painting by Gigoux which admirably represents in our 
opinion the mystery of the resurrection of the Saviour. 
There is no thunderbolt falling, there is no sepulchre bursting 
open in the midst of overwhelmed soldiers with a blaze of 
light; a gentle radiance expands like a morning blossom, the 
tomb opens quietly of itself; the soft twilight is still sufficient 
to illuminate effectively the spectators of the scene. Christ 


1 See Note 47. 


3 2 4 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


does not come forth flying ; he walks out with the placidity 
of eternal calm. His gesture is one of instruction in divine 
things ; His nimbus seems as if it were expanding slowly with 
iris shades, and a new heaven begins to evolve around Him. 
The guards are neither struck down nor terrified ; they are as 
if seized and paralyzed with a stupor which is not devoid of 
admiration nor perhaps without a vague hope, since is it not 
for them, poor hirelings of the Roman world, that the 
Redeemer comes triumphing over death ! All is peace in 
this picture, and the painter has attained the most sublime 
effects by the most perfect simplicity. Once this work of art 
has been seen, it lives always in the memory, and is involun¬ 
tarily contemplated with an emotion which never tires. The 
sentiment experienced is one of ravishment for thought, and 
of ecstacy for the heart. Of the arts above all we must ask 
the revelations of progress. What philosophy as yet either 
cannot or dare not utter, that the artist divines, and he in¬ 
spires us to dream beforehand what we are one day destined 
to know. 

IV. —History of S. Spiridion and of his Daughter 
Irene. 

Towards the middle of the fourth century, at Tremithonte 
in the island of Cyprus, lived the holy Bishop Spiridion, 
one of the fathers of the Council of Nicea. He was a 
mild and venerable old man, poor like Christ, full of 
penitence as an ascetic, and of charity as an apostle. He 
had formerly been married, and his dying wife had be¬ 
queathed to him a daughter, named Irene, who dedicated 
her soul to prayer and her body to virginity. He abode 
with her in a cabin surrounded by a small garden which 
the bishop himself cultivated. He was the adviser of the 
whole neighbourhood, even as Irene was its providence; 
she nursed the sick and visited the poor, endowing them 
with fortitude and distributing to them all the treasures 
of her heart. She prayed, she fasted, she watched so well 
that her health failed, while her soul detached itself more 
and more from earth. Scarcely issued from the catacombs, 
the Christian Church, which Constantine had just covered 


key of magical phenomena 


325 


with the purple, seemed then to be seized by the malady 
which consumed Hercules when he touched the blood¬ 
stained robe of Dejanira; she appeared to be disembowel¬ 
ling herself; contentious Arianism and turbulent orthodoxy 
disputed her shred by shred. The astute and cruel Con- 
stantius had watered the imperial robe of Constantine with 
the blood of his family. Julian was studying philosophy 
in Athens, and amidst the pitiable conflict of theologians 
and rhetoricians, foreseeing the general collapse of the empire, 
without being resigned thereto, he brooded upon the virtues 
of a bygone age, and in the solitude of the old and 
abandoned temples he wept over the glory of the ancient 
gods. Christianity, as a fact, had condemned the old 
world to' death, and it created saints without improving 
public morals; putrefaction, on the contrary, seemed making 
haste to replace the new life. The temporal Church was 
already afflicted by frightful prelates, like George of Cappa¬ 
docia, and the saints, more than ever convinced of the 
approaching end of the world, fled away into the desert. 
Spiridion and his daughter were ascetics like St Paul the 
Eremite and St Anthony, but they comprehended that the 
totality of the life divine dwelt in the spirit of charity. 
Spiridion therefore remained a bishop, and to make it clear 
to our readers after what manner he understood charity, 
we are about to narrate an anecdote of his life. 

It was at the close of Lent, and of such a Lent as was 
understood by Spiridion. The spare stores of the sacred 
forty days were exhausted, and it was now Good Friday; 
this, and the following day, Spiridion would have to pass 
without any nourishment whatever, for the only food in 
the house was a piece of bacon suspended to cure in the 
chimney, and reserved for the Easter festival. Matters 
being in this way, a traveller, overcome with fatigue and 
want, knocked at the door. The bishop of Tremithonte 
received him warmly and loaded him with fatherly solicitude, 
but he very soon perceived that his guest was perishing from 
exhaustion. What could he do ? The hour was late, there 
was no other dwelling at hand, the town itself being a long 
way off. Spiridion did not hesitate; he cut off a slice of 
the salted meat, cooked it, and offered it to the traveller, 


326 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


who rejected it with surprise and dismay. I am a Christian, 
father, he said to the bishop, and how, therefore, can you 
offer me flesh meat on this day ? Do you think me capable 
of insulting by my gluttony the death of Christ, my master ? 
I am a Christian, my son, like yourself, replied the bishop 
gently, and I am, moreover, a bishop, that is to say, a pastor 
and physician. It is as a physician that I place this food 
before you, which is all that it is in my power to provide. 
You are prostrated, and to-morrow, perhaps, it will be too 
late to save your life; receive, therefore, this nourishment 
which I bless, and live. Never, replied the traveller, for 
you are advising me to do what you would not do yourself. 
Not for myself, perhaps, said the old man, but for you 
I would most assuredly, as would you also for me who 
entreat you. Stay! Do you wish me to remove your 
scruples by myself tasting this meat? And St Spiridion 
partook of the bacon to encourage his guest to do likewise; 
for charity was, in his eyes, more imperious than abstinence 
and fasting. Such was Spiridion of Tremithonte, and such 
in all probability was his daughter Irene. These two earthly 
angels possessed but one heart and one soul. When Spiridion 
visited his diocese, Irene took charge of the hermitage, the 
pilgrims, and the seekers of good counsel; all that she did 
and said was approved in advance by her father, and, on her 
part, Irene uttered only what would have been said by 
Spiridion and performed by a marvellous divination that 
only which he would himself have performed. 

These two saints were divided for a time by that labour of 
the second birth which we are accustomed to call death, and 
it was the younger who was first elected to deliverance. 
Irene expired gently, like a lamp when the oil is exhausted. 
Spiridion fulfilled for her the final ministries, but he did not 
mourn her, because she had not left him, and he felt that she 
was more than ever united to him in mind and in heart. 
He seemed to possess a dual memory and a dual mind. 
Possibly Irene had found her paradise in the beatific soul of 
Spiridion. These details are needful to explain the little 
history which follows. 

During a certain absence of Spiridion, a Christian, when 
about to undertake a long journey, had confided to Irene a 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


3 2 7 


sum of money which constituted his whole fortune, and it was 
hidden by the bishop’s daughter, who mentioned the occur¬ 
rence to no one. When the Christian returned Irene was dead, 
and great was the astonishment of the good bishop when he 
claimed the surrender of a trust about which he knew nothing. 
He repaired to the tomb of Irene, and called upon her three 
times in a loud voice. Irene then replied from the depth of 
the grave, saying:—My father, my father, what would you ? 
So at least the legends recount.—What hast thou done with 
the money which our brother did entrust to thee ? asked 
Spiridion.—My father, I concealed it in such and such a 
place.—The father dug accordingly and discovered the 
treasure intact. 

There is evidence of invention in the details of this history, 
but it may be true in its essence. No one will imagine that 
the souls of the dead, of the just above all, are shut up in the 
tomb, and experience the slow corruption of flesh and bone. 
Irene was not therefore below the earth. That the holy man 
may have repaired to the tomb of his daughter to evoke a 
memory and obtain by magnetic sympathy an intuition of 
second sight, this does not seem to us impossible. We 
believe in the intimate union of holy souls whom death 
cannot separate. God fills the distance between heaven and 
earth and leaves no void between hearts. It was possible 
therefore for the memories of Irene to be transmitted to 
Spiridion, and who knows furthermore whether the saintly 
daughter had not at some time mentioned the trust to her 
father, but his great age and episcopal cares had caused him 
to forget the confidence. Do not things which we have 
formerly said or written frequently recur to us with the fresh¬ 
ness of new thought? Are we not pursued by numberless 
indistinct reminiscences, and who can assign the place filled 
in our waking reveries and in dreams during sleep by memories 
that have been many times effaced ? 

With this revelation of Irene to her father Spiridion we will 
connect a more recent and less familiar experience, concerning 
Sylvanus Marechal, an eccentric personality of the-seventeenth 
century, who thought that he was an absolute atheist. Dis¬ 
believing in the existence of God, logic compelled him to 
deny the immortality of the soul, and he composed bad 


328 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


verses in defence of this evil cause. He was, for the rest, 
an honourable man, beloved by his wife and esteemed by his 
friends. When the conversation turned upon death, he 
commonly spoke of it as the great sleep, sententiously adding 
the following couplet, which was one of his peccadilloes 
against Apollo:— 

“ Sleep until the fair time— 

Faith, you’ll sleep a rare time ! ” 

He whom the progress of his period had conducted only to 
atheism had his doubts about progress, and scarcely put faith, 
as we see, in the coming of a milder age, for atheism is usually 
only the despair of disappointed belief. Unfortunately, those 
who reject the immortality of the soul must die like the rest of 
mortals, and Sylvanus Marechal saw the approach of the hour 
of the great sleep. His wife and a friend named Madame 
Dufour watched beside him, and the last agony had begun, 
when suddenly the dying man, as if recollecting something, 
made a great effort to speak. The two women bent over 
him. Then, in a voice so feeble that it could scarcely be 
heard, he uttered these words : There are fifteen . Here his 
speech failed; he sought to recover it, and a second time 
whispered : Fifteen —but it was impossible to distinguish the 
rest. Once more his lips moved slightly, and, with a great 
sigh, he expired. The following night, Madame Dufour, in 
the act of retiring to rest, and before extinguishing her lamp, 
heard the door of her room open softly ; she shaded the light 
with her hand, and, looking in the direction of the sound, 
beheld Sylvanus Marechal in his ordinary clothes, looking no 
sadder and no more cheerful.—Dear lady, said he, I come to 
tell you that which I was unable to say yesterday. There are 
fifteen hundred francs in gold put away in a secret drawer of 
my cabinet; see that this money does not fall into other hands 
than those of my wife.—Madame Dufour, more astonished 
than alarmed at this peaceable apparition, replied thereupon 
to the ghost:—Well, I conclude that you believe now in the 
immortality of the soul.—Sylvanus Marechal smiled sadly, 
made an uncertain motion with his head, and replied only by 
a final repetition of his couplet:— 

“ Sleep until the fair time— 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


3 2 9 


So saying, he retired. At this point Madame Dufour became 
seized with fear, which proves that she was only now fully 
awake ; she sprang out of bed, hurried to the room of Madame 
Marechal, whom she met in the act of leaving it, herself all 
pale and frightened.—I have just seen M. Marechal, they 
exclaimed in one breath, and presently recounted to one 
another the almost identical details of their vision. The fifteen 
hundred francs were discovered in the secret drawer. We 
derive this narrative from a common friend of the two ladies 
who frequently heard them recount it. We regard it as true, 
but are of opinion that when the ladies beheld the phantom, 
they were already partially asleep. Preoccupied by the last 
words of Marechal, they brought to bear on them, with the 
lucidity peculiar to persons in affliction, a thousand trivial cir¬ 
cumstances which they knew without having noticed, which 
were graven unawares on their memory ; the dying man had, 
moreover, forcibly projected his will into these two sympathetic 
souls; that which he was anxious to impart, he had given 
them the power to divine. They beheld him absolutely as he 
would be beheld in dream, in his every-day clothes and with 
his mania for quoting bad verses; they beheld him as the dead 
are beheld invariably, in a kind of retrospective mirror; they 
beheld him, finally, as he would have been beheld by a 
somnambulist, and they ascertained the secret of his concealed 
treasure as such a person would also have ascertained it. It 
is, in fact, a most remarkable instance of collective and 
simultaneous hallucination, with identity of second sight, and 
it constitutes no presumption in favour of the truth of evoca¬ 
tions and the return of the dead. But whatever be the fact 
with regard to the apparition of Sylvanus Marechal, his post¬ 
humous unbelief recalls a singular idea of Swedenborg. Faith, 
says the latter, being a grace which must be deserved, God 
imposes it on no one, even after death. Hence, in the world 
of spirits, it is not uncommon to meet with sceptics who deny 
more than ever the things they denied formerly, and escape 
from the evidence of immortality by supposing that they are 
not dead, but merely the victims of some mental malady which 
has misplaced the seat of their sensations. As they lived on 
earth, so they live still, lamenting only that they behold no 
longer that which they once beheld, no longer hear what they 


330 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


heard formerly, taste what they used to taste, or possess what 
was previously theirs; they lead thus a false life, protesting 
against the true life, and deceived for ever in their weariness 
by the hope of death. These imaginings of the Swedish mystic 
are not less ingenious than appalling, and would adequately 
explain to us, if not the light sleep of Irene in her grave at 
Tremithonte, at least the twofold visit of Sylvanus Marechal 
on the night succeeding his death, for merely material and 
sordid interests, if, instead of suppositions derived from the 
imaginations of mystics, we did not infinitely prefer the simple 
hypotheses of science and reason. 

V.—Mysteries of Ancient Initiations—Evocations by 
Blood—The Rites of Theurgy—Christianity 
the Enemy of Blood. 

The mysteries of madness are mysteries of blood. It is 
the unbridled motion of the blood which perturbs the 
reason of waking persons, even as it produces at night the 
incoherence of dreams. Madness and certain vices are 
hereditary because they inhere in the blood; the blood is 
the great sympathetic agent of life; it is the motor of 
imagination; it is the animate substratum of the magnetic 
light or the astral light polarized in living beings ; it is the 
first incarnation of the universal fluid, it is the materialized 
vital light. It is made in the image and likeness of the 
infinite; it is a negative substance swarming with myriads 
of floating and dancing globules, which are not merely alive 
and magnetized, but are bursting with life and crimson 
with its insatiable plenitude. The genesis thereof is the 
greatest of all the marvels of nature. It lives only to 
metamorphose; it is the universal Proteus: it comes forth 
from principles in which it is not contained, it becomes 
flesh, blood, bone, hair, special and delicate tissues, nails, 
sweat, tears. It is neither joined with corruption nor with 
death: when life ceases, it decomposes of itself; if it be 
possible to be reanimated and renewed by a fresh magnetiza¬ 
tion of its globules, then life takes a new lease. The 
universal substance, with its double motion, is the great 
arcanum of being, and the blood is the great arcanum of 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


33 1 


life. Hence all religious mysteries are at the same time 
mysteries of blood. Without sacrifice, there is no cultus, 
and unbloody sacrifice could exist only as the trans-sub¬ 
stantiation of veritable blood, ever smoking, ever speaking, 
ever crying, in its divinely expiatory virtue, upon the altar 
even as upon Calvary. The gods of antiquity loved blood, 
and the demons were athirst for it. It is this which inspired 
in Count Joseph de Maistre the idea that punishment 
propitiates, that the scaffold supplements the altar, and that 
the executioner is an appendix to the priest. 

From the vapour of blood, says Paracelsus, imagination 
borrows all the spectres which it brings forth. Visions are 
the delirium of the blood; the secret agent of sympathies, 
it propagates hallucinations like a subtle virus; when it 
evaporates, the serum thereof dilates, the globules expand, 
they assume monstrous shapes, and thus give bodies to the 
most bizarre phantoms ; when it ascends to the exalted 
brain of a St Anthony or a St Theresa, it appears before 
them and it actualizes more extravagant chimaeras than 
those of Callot, Salvator, or Goya. No one could invent 
the monsters which morbid excitement hatches; it is the 
poet of dreams and the grand hierophant of delirium. So, 
in antiquity as in the middle ages, the dead were evoked 
by means of the effusion of blood. A trench was dug, 
wine was poured therein, together with intoxicating perfumes 
and the blood of a black sheep, to which the horrible 
sorceresses of Thessaly added that of a child. The hiero¬ 
phants of Baal, or of Nisroch, seized with furious exaltation, 
made punctures over their whole body, and then demanded 
apparitions or miracles from the steam of their own blood. 
Thereupon, all things swam before their wandering and 
diseased eyes; the moon took the tint of the flowing blood, 
and they thought that they beheld it fall from heaven ; 
hideous and formless creatures came leaping or crawling 
out of the earth ; larvae and lemures took shape; pallid and 
villainous heads, looking like old winding-sheets and bearded 
with the mould of the grave, came and bent over the trench, 
stretching forth their dry tongues to lap the spilt blood. 
The magician, depleted and covered with wounds, fell upon 
them with the sword till the apparition of the desired form 


332 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


and the attainment of the desired oracle. It was commonly 
the final dream of exhaustion, the paroxysm of - distraction ; 
the evoker not infrequently fell as if struck by lightning, and 
if he were alone, if prompt help were not given him, if a 
potent cordial did not help his restoration to life, he would 
be found dead on the morrow, and it would be said that 
the spirits had been avenged. 

The mysteries of the ancient world were of two kinds. The 
lesser mysteries were concerned with initiation into the priest¬ 
hood, the greater mysteries were initiation into the grand 
sacerdotal work, otherwise theurgy—that dread word, having 
a double meaning, which signifies the creation of God. Yes, 
in theurgy the priest was instructed how he must make gods 
in his own image and likeness, devising them from his own 
flesh and vitalizing them with his own blood. It was the 
science of evocations by the sword and the theory of 
sanguinary phantoms. It was there that the initiated person 
had to destroy his initiator; it was there that CEdipus be¬ 
came King of Thebes by inflicting death upon Laius. We 
will endeavour to explain what is obscure in these allegorical 
expressions. It will be already divined that there was no 
initiation into the greater mysteries without the effusion of 
blood, that even of the purest and most noble. It was in the 
crypt of the greater mysteries that Ninyas avenged the murder 
of Ninus upon his own mother. The furies and spectres of 
Orestes were the work of theurgy. The greater mysteries 
were the Holy Tribunal of antiquity, wherein the free-judges 
of the priesthood modelled new gods with the ashes of old 
kings moistened in the blood of usurpers or assassins. Were 
they therefore themselves assassins or at least executioners ? 
No; the right of sacrifice devolved on them by the universal 
consent of the nations. The priest does not assassinate, 
neither does he execute; he immolates; and it was for this 
reason that Moses, nourished by the doctrine of the greater 
mysteries, chose for the sacerdotal tribe the one which best 
knew, according to the bible’s own expression, how to con¬ 
secrate its hands with blood. It was not Baal and Nisroch 
alone that in those times required human victims; the god of 
the Jews also thirsted for the blood of kings, and Joshuah 
offered him hecatombs of vanquished monarchs. Jeptha 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


333 


sacrificed his daughter; Samuel cut King Agag in pieces 
upon the sacred stone of Gilgal. Moses, like the old 
initiators of the greater mysteries, went with Joshuah, his 
successor, into the caverns of Mount Nebo, and Joshuah 
returned alone. His body was never found, for in the 
greater mysteries they had the secret of the consuming fire. 
Nadab and Abiu, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram had mournful 
experience thereof. When Saul was rejected by God, in 
other words, when he was condemned as a usurper of the 
priesthood and a profaner of the mysetries, he became the 
sport of hallucinations, for the grand hierophants possessed 
the secret of phantoms. It was then that Achitophel advised 
him to massacre all the priests, as if one could ever massacre 
all. The blood of the offerers of sacrifice is a seed of fresh 
holocausts. You are guilty of the 2nd of September, and St 
Bartholomew is justified. You think to punish Torquemada, 
and you make way for the achievements of Trestaillon. The 
priest who led Louis XVI. to the scaffold, and said to him 
with the supreme authority of the pontiff: Son of St Louis, 
ascend to heaven !—seems to accomplish by himself, with the 
Convention for his subordinate minister, the great sacrifice of 
the Revolution. The victim himself reveals and consecrates 
the priest by his fall. I will set a seal upon thee, said Adonai 
to Cain, so that thou shalt be inviolable, and that no man 
shall dare uplift his hand against thee. Abel was the first 
victim and Cain the first priest of the world. Nevertheless, 
Abel had exercised a species of priesthood before Cain, and 
was the first who poured out the blood of creatures before 
God. The Bible says that he offered the firstlings of his 
flock to the Lord; Cain, on the contrary, presented only the 
fruits of the earth. God rejected the fruits and chose the 
blood, but he did not make Abel inviolable, because the 
blood of animals is the type rather than realization of true 
sacrifice. Then the ambitious Cain consecrated his hands 
with the blood of Abel, after which he built towns and made 
kings, for he had become sovereign pontiff. At a later period, 
had Judas Iscariot repented instead of destroying himself, he 
would have executed a rough treaty with St Peter. Next to 
Judas, Peter was, in fact, the most sanguinary of the apostles. 
Was it for that reason only that he deserved to be the first 


334 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


pope ? Away with all idea of sacrilegious irony ! We are 
revealing the grand sacerdotal law and desire not for that 
reason to affront the papacy. We mean to say that the 
immolator assumes and sums all the transgressions of the 
people, and is the first to be cleansed by the all-availing blood 
of the victim. So at least thought the hierophants of the 
ancient world, when they gave themselves with veiled heads 
to the swords of their successors in the crypts of the greater 
mysteries. QEdipus unconsciously slew Laius, and all the 
grand initiates of the science of GEdipus expiated in their turn 
that symbolical murder. Thus, Masonry, which still at our 
own day perpetuates the symbolical tradition of the ancient 
mysteries, invariably speaks of avenging the death of the 
fabulous Hiram. A man who feels that he is unfortunate, 
without having the consciousness of justice to support him, 
comes soon to believe himself punished for an involuntary 
fault; he believes that he has destroyed his own felicity; the 
need of expiation prompts the notion of sacrifice, and by 
consecrating the sanguinary altar of the gods, sacrifice creates 
priests. 

Jesus, the sole initiator who never slew, died for the 
abolition of bloody sacrifices. So is He greater than all 
pontiffs, and what therefore could He be if not God? He 
became God upon Calvary; but His disciples, by denying 
and by selling Him, became priests, and have perpetuated 
the old world, which will endure so long as the priests shall 
continue to live by the altar; in other words, to eat the 
flesh of the victims. Yet there are so-called wise men who 
tell you that Christianity is in its death-throes, and that the 
world of Jesus Christ is becoming quickly a thing of the past. 
It is the old world which is expiring; it is idolatry that is 
passing away ! The Gospel has merely been published: it 
has not reigned upon the earth. Catholicity, that is, the 
universality of a single religion, is still nothing but a principle 
which many persons regard as an Utopia. But principles 
are not Utopias; they are stronger than nations and kings, 
more durable than empires, more stable than worlds. Heaven 
and earth may pass away, said Christ, but my words will not 
pass away. We read in the Acts of the Apostles that St 
Peter once had a vision. He beheld a great cloth covered 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


335 


with clean and unclean animals, while a voice said unto him : 
Kill and eat! This was the first manifestation of the temporal 
papacy. Since that time the sovereign pontiffs have held 
themselves licensed to slay in order that they might eat. 
Jesus Christ fasted and He slew not; He even said to St 
Peter: Put up thy sword into the scabbard, for he who 
strikes with the sword shall perish by the sword. But this 
was precisely one of those utterances which were not to be 
understood till the advent of the spirit of intelligence and of 
love, which, as we have good reason to discern, has not 
established a definitive reign in this world. The sovereign 
pontiffs of the ancient worships were then all immolators of 
men, and all the gods of sacerdotalism loved flesh and blood. 
Moloch differed from Jehovah only by lack of orthodoxy, and 
the God of Jeptha had similar mysteries to those of Belus. 
The monks of the middle ages drew blood regularly, like the 
priests of Baal, for the sterile divinity of perpetual continence 
is an idol which desires blood; the vital force whereof we 
would deprive nature must be poured upon the altar of death. 
We have said that blood is the sire of phantoms, and it was 
by means of the phantoms of blood that the priests of Babel 
and of Argos perturbed the reason of Ninyas and Orestes. 
Semiramis and Clytemnestra had been dedicated to the infernal 
gods, and the close similarity of their legends seems to indicate 
that the one is modelled on the other. Ninus was king of 
priests; Semiramis sought to be the queen of nations, and 
by crime insured possession of the crown of Ninus. The 
political world had then no tribunal at which to judge this 
woman, so much was she justified by great deeds. She 
sowed the world with wonders; those who envied her rose up 
in multitudes against her, but she came forth unattended and 
the revolts died of themselves. She had, however, a son, who 
was held as hostage by the priests; now Ninyas was an 
initiate of the greater mysteries, and he had sworn to avenge 
Ninus when his murderer was as yet unknown to him. 
Semiramis, on her side, was obsessed by spectres and remorse. 
The woman within her overcame the queen in secret, and 
she frequently visited the necropolis to mourn and shudder 
over the ashes of Ninus. There she encountered Ninyas, 
goaded by the hierophants; between son and mother there 


33 6 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


loomed the spectre of the assassinated king. Semiramis was 
veiled; the phantom commanded him to strike; the young 
initiate stepped forward; with a cry Semiramis raised her 
veil, for she had recognised Ninyas. Nay, thou art no longer 
Ninyas, said the spectre; thou art myself, thou art Ninus risen 
from the tomb ! He seemed to absorb the young man, and 
to mingle with him in such a manner that the queen beheld 
only the ghost of Ninus, all pale and holding the sacred 
sword in his hand. Thereupon she drew down her veil and 
bared her womb, like Agrippina at a later date. When 
Ninyas came back to himself, he was covered with the 
blood of his mother. Is it I who have killed thee ? he cried, 
distracted. No, replied Semiramis, embracing him for the 
last time, we are both victims, and thou art not the immolator. 
I die assassinated by the high priest of Belus ! 

Such were the priests of Babylon, and such those of 
Mycenae and of Argos; Calchas exacted the blood of 
Iphigenia; Clytemnestra cursed the priests and avenged her 
daughter by the murder of Agamemnon. Orestes, incited 
by the oracles, slew his mother, and sought the bloody idol 
of the avenging Diana in the depths of the Tauric Chersonese. 
Have we any need to be astonished at these plots against 
the family when, centuries later and in the full light of 
Christianity, we find a Roman priest, the terrible Jerome, 
writing to his disciple HeliodorusIf thy father slumber 
on the threshold of the door, if thy mother bare before thee 
that breast which has been thy nourishment, trample on the 
body of thy father, walk over the bosom of thy mother, and 
haste with dry eyes to the Saviour who calls thee ! Such are 
the holocausts of flesh and blood which fulfil the great work 
of theurgy. We are destined to see later on that god for 
whom we crushed the breasts of our mothers having hell 
beneath his feet and the exterminating sword in his hand. 
He pursues the ascetic like remorse; he delights in the 
desert over the terrors of perdition and the despair of mind. 
Moloch burnt children for merely a few seconds ; it was 
reserved for the disciples of the God who died for the 
redemption of the world to create a new Moloch whose 
brazier is eternal! 

While lamenting that M. Renan should have ever penned his 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


337 


ill-starred work, it contains one admirable observation which 
atones in our eyes for many faults. It is this ; no one was 
less of a priest than Jesus. We must distinguish at the same 
time that the reference is to the priest of antiquity, who unfor¬ 
tunately is still met with in modern times. St Jerome was 
unconsciously a hierophant of the great mysteries; St Vincent 
of Paul is the type of the new priest, of the true Christian 
priest, that perpetual reincarnation of Jesus Christ. The 
Church has a horror of blood. 1 In this ineffable maxim 
is the entire spirit of Christianity resumed. The Church 
has a horror of blood and expels far from her fold those who 
love to shed it. The Christian priests cannot exercise the 
functions of public accuser and judge without becoming 
irregular, that is, incapable of fulfilling the holy functions. 
Hence the murderers of the Inquisition were not Christian 
priests; they were immolators of the old world who gave the 
lie to Christianity. A pope can condemn no one to death. 
The good shepherd gives his life for his sheep, but knoweth 
not how to kill them. A pope cannot make war. When 
Julius II. played the veteran, he no longer acted as pope; he 
was still a tyrant of the lower empire. The good Pius IX., 
who, it is said, has visions, must be obsessed by the spectres 
of Perouse and of Castelfidardo ; hence he must shrink from his 
own hands, he who is the supreme head of the Church, for the 
church has a horror of blood. To sacrifice others for one’s 
self —such is the old world, the world of Jupiter and Saturn, 
of Csesars and of auguries. To sacrifice one’s self for others 
—such is the new world, the world of Christ, the world to 
come. Slay to live—such is the grand fatality of the grand 
mysteries ; die that others may live—such is the divine right 
and the liberty of human initiation in the triumph of reason. 
Divinity and humanity are closely joined in Jesus Christ, and 
he who strikes the one, wounds the other. Be warned, ye 
judges of the earth ; henceforth all men belong to Christ, the 
whole of guilty humanity has been purchased by his innocent 
blood. All who are guilty are called to repent, and all to 
whom repentance is possible should be sacred like Cain. Do 
you know why God thus anxiously guarded the blood of Cain ? 


See Note 48. 
Y 


338 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Because every drop of that blood was worth a corresponding 
drop of the Redeemer’s, and that the ransom might be effica¬ 
cious, no portion of what was purchased must be lost. The 
blood of Abel cried out to God, says the Bible. Who then 
can silence it ? One more powerful was necessary in order to 
drown that voice, the voice of the blood of Jesus Christ. 
That of Abel demanded justice; Abel was but a man, and 
the blood of Jesus alone had sufficient power to cry that 
justice is pardon with God. Who could have told him that? 
Jesus alone knew it that He might reveal it to the world, and 
if He knew it, it was because He was God. So also could He 
alone abolish the sacrifice of blood and institute the priesthood 
of voluntary sacrifice. This He did, this is what the martyrs have 
understood, this is what saints like Vincent of Paul attempted 
not vainly, but still with so much difficulty, on earth, and you 
dare say that Christianity is passing away! I ask you, rather, 
has it come into the world otherwise than as a message mis¬ 
conceived and a contested prodigy ? I ask you if the blood 
of Abel have ceased to flow, and if the priesthood have 
permanently been emancipated from the sanguinary hands of 
the children of Cain ? It is said that at Naples the blood of 
the martyr St Januarius annually liquefies and moves as if it 
could find no rest; it is said also that in many localities of 
France the wine in the chalices becomes blood, and conse¬ 
crated hosts are reddened with a sweat like that in the garden 
of Olives. The reason is that there is a solidarity between 
martyrs, because unexpiated blood cries against effusions of 
fresh blood. That of St Januarius protests against the 
Inquisition, still existing in the ill-starred brains of the 
Gaumes and the Veuillots. The wine of the Eucharistic 
becomes blood to forbid unworthy priests to drink it, and 
hosts are dyed with the hues of murder as if the discouraged 
Christ had renounced transubstantiation and again become a 
corpse. Now, when Christ becomes a corpse, it is because He 
is preparing for another resurrection, and we believe that the 
resurrection of Christianity is at hand, but this is not our con¬ 
cern here. Our design has been to establish that the reign of 
the gods of blood is at an end. Spill therefore no more blood ; 
stir it no more, even for gods to come forth from it. Let the 
dead rest, for the oracles of spilt blood are brothers of the 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


339 


oracles of the tomb. The table turns because the blood cir¬ 
culates ; let the one become calm and the pretended spirits 
will be silenced. Yes, spiritualists, the spirits who speak in 
your tables are the spirits of your own blood. You expand it 
to animate the wood, as the priests of Mexico deemed that 
they imparted a soul to their idols by sprinkling them with 
freshly spilt blood. What you now r do was done before the 
coming of Christ; it has been and perhaps is still done in 
India: it is done above all among savages, whose jugglers 
surround the altars of their manitous with bleeding scalps, 
conjure them and cause them to speak. Magnetism is the 
projection of the spirits of blood, and you magnetize, your 
furniture by impoverishing your brain and your heart. 


VI.—The last Initiates of the old world : Apollonius 
of Tyana, Maximus of Ephesus, and Julian—The 
Pagans of the Revolution—A Hierophant of 
Ceres in the Eighteenth Century. 

The sacrifice of one’s self for others is something apparently 
so insensate, but so sublime in reality, that the antagonism 
thus constituted between egotistic reason and the enthusiasm 
of self-devotion completely justifies the Credo quia absurdum 
of the paradoxical Tertullian. Faith, like the antique 
Minerva, comes forth fully armed, and at once takes her 
stand as a victor. Nature herself, even holy and immortal 
Nature, seems a moment overcome, because she is surpassed. 
On the day when a man died willingly to save others the 
supernatural was proved. Thereupon the wise men of this 
world and the men of reason were thunderstruck; they 
sought in the gospel for the secret of the power of Christianity, 
and they failed to find it. They saw in it merely a mystic 
compilation of Jewish parables and Egyptian allegories; they 
set themselves to oppose this book by another, and to oppose 
Jesus Christ by a man ; it was thus that the life of Apollonius 
of Tyana came to be written. This contemporary monu¬ 
ment of the Gospels has been insufficiently studied; it contains 
both symbols and histories; therein fable elbows truth, but 
the fable itself is always a doctrine presented under the veil 


340 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


of allegory. Thus, the journey of Apollonius into India, 
and his visit to the monarch Hiarchas in the domain of the 
sages, typify the entire dogma of Hermes and contain all the 
agreed signs, and the whole secret of the ancient sanctuaries, 
in other words, the great work of science and of nature. The 
lions of the mountain are the igneous metalloids which con¬ 
ceal the philosophical mercury; the well wherein the reservoirs 
of rain and wind are discovered is the vault for the fermen¬ 
tation of the electro-magnetic fire, nourished by air and 
agitated by water. And so in like manner with the other 
symbols. There is an almost confusing resemblance between 
King Hiarchas and the fabulous Hiram, to whom Solomon 
sent for the cedars of Lebanon and the gold of Ophir. Here 
let us note that Jesus sought nothing from the princes of His 
period, and when questioned by Herod He disdained to reply. 
Apollonius is sober, like Jesus chaste, and is like Him also 
dedicated to a wandering and austere life. The essential 
distinction beween them is that Apollonius favours super¬ 
stitions while Jesus destroys them; that Apollonius incites 
to bloodshed and Jesus curses the works of the sword. A 
town is stricken by the pest; Apollonius reaches it; the 
people, who look upon him as a thaumaturge, press round, 
and conjure him to stop the plague. Behold the scourge 
which afflicts you ! cries the false prophet, indicating an aged 
beggar. Stone this man and the epidemic will cease. Now, 
we know what is possible to a multitude goaded by super¬ 
stition and terror. The mendicant speedily disappeared 
under a pile of missiles. When these were subsequently 
cleared away Philostratus tells us that the corpse of a large 
black dog was discovered in place of a human body; here 
the absurd wholly fails to justify the atrocious. Jesus caused 
no one to be stoned, not even the woman taken in adultery; 
He did not lay public scourges on the head of the destitute 
Lazarus, who was driven by Dives from his door, and on 
whom the very dogs took pity. Paradise, and not a death of 
torture, was the compensation he dispensed for the misery of 
this plague-spot in the eyes of the fortunate. Here Apollonius 
appears as a miserable sorcerer and Jesus as the son of God. 
Apollonius, moreover, had visions; he assisted in spirit at 
the murder of the Roman tyrant, and uttered cries of joy. 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


34i 


Courage, he shouted : Strike, sacrifice the monster! But Jesus 
pronounced no malediction upon Herod or Pilate, and prayed 
for them, even as for His murderers, in those sublime words: 
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do ! The 
genius of Apollonius is a splendid insanity which rebels and 
protests; that of Jesus is a modest reasonableness which 
accepts and submits. With Apollonius of Tyana, the old 
world seems to have uttered its last message, but Providence, 
who is a rare farcer, had still Julian in store for it, that it 
might have a final chance of revenge. Julian as philosopher 
was like Apollonius and as emperor like Marcus Aurelius; 
but he was also a sophist after the manner of Libanius, and 
he reposed entire confidence in such charlatans as Maximus 
of Ephesus and Iamblichus. Never could this stiff and 
stubborn spirit comprehend the sweet mysteries of the manger. 
Julian had no love for women, and he begot no children; 
he was chaste through disdain of pleasure, rather than from 
self-denial; his philosophical asperity led him to neglect the 
commonest rules of cleanliness. He confesses in the Miso- 
pogon that his hair and beard were infested by the foulest 
vermin, and seems almost to regard it as a virtue. Here the 
Casarpediculosus becomes actually grotesque. Oh, the superb 
goat’s chin! Oh, the ill-kept beard ! sang the inhabitants of 
Antioch. Julian had his answer, as he thought, when he 
reproached the singers with their luxury and their vices, as 
if the vices of the one could justify the filth of the other. 
This unkempt hero, who despite himself had received an 
inseparable tincture of philanthropy from the Christian religion, 
was by religion a lover of bloody sacrifices. What an 
immolator is this great philosopher! What a butcher this 
excellent prince ! said the predecessors of Pasquinus. So was 
he always to be seen with his garments thrown back and his 
hands full of smoking entrails. Now, it was no longer the 
period of Homeric princes who despatched the victims them¬ 
selves. Julian understood neither his epoch nor the dignity 
of his rank. Nero might pose as a play-actor, because, 
according to the apt expression of Tacitus, fear lent reason 
to his contempt, but Julian, too good to make himself feared, 
too repellent to make himself loved, could not escape ridicule 
when he exercised the revolting functions of the old sacrifices. 


342 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Ultimately he was himself sacrificed, and the Christian world 
applauded. 

It is seriously affirmed that, after his death, upon opening 
the doors of a small temple which he had caused to be walled 
up before starting on his expedition to Persia, the corpse of a 
naked woman was found therein hanging by her hair, and 
with her stomach cut open. Is this merely the invention of 
hatred, or is it rather the revelation of a mystery ? Was this 
woman a martyr or a willing victim ? We incline to the 
latter notion. Some young female fanatic had possibly 
presented herself to oppose her sacrifice to that of Christ, and 
thus endeavour to assure the prosperity of Julian’s reign and 
the return of the ancient gods. The Emperor had shut his 
eyes and only the grand pontiff had assisted at the holocaust. 
The walled temple, the bleeding victim suspended between 
heaven and earth, seem to resemble a parody of the cruci¬ 
fixion. We know that at a period very near to our own, 
young women caused themselves to be crucified after this 
manner for the triumph of the Jansenist heresy, and if we 
have regard to the barbarous rites which dishonoured the 
religion of Julian, we shall not reject this history as a 
posthumous calumny. Julian had been initiated into the 
grand mysteries by Maximus of Ephesus, and he believed in 
the all-potent virtue of blood. It was, in fact, by a baptism 
of blood that Maximus had consecrated him to the ancient 
gods. Conducted half-naked and with eyes bandaged into 
the crypt of the Temple of Diana, Julian received a knife 
from the hands of Maximus, and a mysterious voice com¬ 
manded him to stab a pallid human figure of which a glimpse 
had been only permitted him; then the hoodwink was 
replaced, his hand was taken, and he was made to touch 
what seemed to be warm and living flesh; therein he plunged 
the sacred weapon, and was forced to prostrate himself 
beneath the life-spring he had thus opened; the warm and 
sickening aspersion made him shiver, but he remained silent 
and received the full consecration of the blood thus poured 
out. “ By this blood,” said Maximus, “ I cleanse thee from 
the stain of baptism; thou art the son of Mithras and thou 
hast plunged thy knife into the side of the sacred bull. May 
the ablution of the taurobole purify thee!” Had Julian 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


343 


really immolated a man? Had he not simply sacrificed a 
bull ? He himself did not know, but that these were the rites 
of the grand mysteries we have no room to doubt, for they 
recur in the traditions of illuminism and in the old rituals of 
Masonry, which is acknowledged by all specialists on the sub¬ 
ject to be the heir of the doctrines and ceremonies of ancient 
initiation. 

Following the custom of the antique historians, Ammianus 
Marcellinus composed a magnificent peroration and put 
it into the mouth of the dying Julian. Here we prefer to 
accept the Christian tradition rather than the sophistic 
history. Now, the tradition is this:—When the three- 
edged javelin was withdrawn from the wound of Julian, 
when the life blood burst forth in streams, and he felt his 
strength leave him, he filled both his hands with that blood, 
and, raising them up to heaven, pronounced these mysterious 
words :—Thou hast conquered, O Galilean ! The utterance 
has been interpreted as a blasphemy, but was it not rather 
a tardy retractation ? The initiate of the taurobole com¬ 
prehended when it was too late that the sacrifice of one’s 
self prevails over the sacrifice of others. He felt that when 
giving his own blood for men Christ for ever abrogated the 
bloody offerings of the ancient world. The sovereign pontiff 
of Jupiter therefore departed hence, offering in his turn 
unto heaven his own blood in place of that of bulls and 
goats. Yes, he seemed to say, Thou whom contemptuously 
I called the Galilean, art greater than I am and Thou hast 
conquered me ! Stay, behold my blood which I give Thee 
as Thou gavest Thine! I die confessing that Thou art my 
master! Thou hast conquered, O Galilean ! The hands 
of the unhappy emperor succumbed, his blood fell upon 
his head, and it was thought that he had tried to cast it 
against heaven. Perchance in this manner he cleansed 
himself from the stains of the taurobole and renewed the 
effaced traces of his baptism. His act of penitence was 
misconstrued and brought down a curse on his memory. 
But he was good and just, and God doth not destroy for 
ever those who have loved and sought for goodness even 
in the obscurities of error. 

It was on the faith of the phantoms evoked by Maximus 


344 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


of Ephesus that Julian believed in the real existence of his 
gods, and these phantoms were the hallucinations of blood. 
We are assured that Julian, exhausted by his preparatory 
fasts and still warm with his baptism of blood, saw all the 
divinities of old Olympus pass before him. But he saw 
them not as they are depicted by the poets of antiquity, 
rather as they then existed in the disenchanted imaginations 
of the people—old, decrepit, deserted, wretched. They 
were no longer the grand divinities of Homer, they were 
the grotesque deities of Lucian, so true is it that the pre¬ 
tended spirits of evocation are the mirages or reflections of 
collective imagination. Visionary spiritism is the photography 
of dreams. Furthermore, mental photographs are more 
enduring than the solar, for if the first are effaced they can 
always be renewed by again plunging the mind into the 
same aberrations. In 1793 we find the last initiates of 
the grand mysteries, philanthropists of the school of Julian, 
pursuing the spectre of liberty through a mist of blood. 
We have seen the grotesque Brutus and the sordid Publicola 
rise in a sense from the tomb, swearing by the holy guillotine, 
while invoking the gods. Saint-Just fabled a world governed 
by aged labourers and men of virtue decorated with a white 
girdle. Robespierre constituted himself grand pontiff, and, 
following the bloody law of the old mysteries, he was doomed 
to perish at the hands of those whom he had initiated; all 
philosophers and apostates like Julian perish as he did in 
despair for the future. But less generous, or possibly less 
sincere, they die without presenting to heaven the offering 
of their own blood, and without confessing that once more 
the Galilean has conquered. This is where dreams lead, 
this is the consequence of evoking the dead. Had Brutus 
and Cassius been permitted to sleep in their graves; had 
. the spectres of the tribunal and the forum not arisen in 
the congested brains of these men whose reason was so 
appropriately represented by an abandoned woman, the 
children of France would not have been cast by myriads 
into the devouring maw of the revolutionary Moloch. But 
the larvae which visit us from beyond the tomb are ever 
cold and thirsty; spectres cry for blood, and when heads 
are so turned as to bring forth visions, hands are terribly 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


345 


near the commission of crimes. Give me arrows! cried 
Quanctius Aucler : Let a weak hierophant of Ceres avenge 
outraged nature. It was a question of killing the priests, 
but our hero, whom the revolution had completely demented, 
must destroy them by arrow-wounds so as to give a more 
antique touch to their execution. The said Aucler, who 
termed himself a hierophant of Ceres, left behind him a 
curious book entitled Trade, in which he calls seriously 
for a return to the cultus of -Jupiter, since one could not 
cleave to that of Saturn. But the revolution desired not 
to adore either Saturn or Jupiter; she was herself Saturn, 
and, according to the sombre prophecy of Vergniaud, she 
devoured all her children. 

VII.— Spirits in the Middle Ages—The Devil ever 

PLAYS THE CHIEF PART IN THE COMEDY OF WONDERS 

—Archbishop Udo of Magdeburg—The deacon 

Raymond—Vampires—Haunted Houses. 

So long as that childhood of modern reason termed the 
middle ages endures, the secret forces of nature, the pheno¬ 
mena of magnetism, hallucinations above all, of which cloisters 
are the prolific forcing-houses, prompt credence in the al¬ 
most permanent influence of spirits. The aerial phantoms 
which imagination creates and pursues in the clouds become 
sylphs, the aqueous mists are undines, the vortices of fire 
are salamanders, the intoxicating emanations of the earth are 
gnomes, and the elves dance with the fairies in the moonlight. 
The entire Sabbath is let loose. Reason sleeps, the critical 
faculty is voided, science is dumb. Abelard expiates cruelly 
his premature homage to intelligence and to love. The dead 
stir, the graves speak, without anyone suspecting that living 
persons have been inhumed. The gospel alone shines in the 
midst of this profound darkness, like a lamp ever lighted in a 
church full of terrors and mysteries. Now, the Gospel declares 
that the dead can never return, for the order of Providence is 
opposed to it. Here is the text in question, nor can it be too 
frequently recited in answer to spiritist reveries; it occurs at 
the close of the sixteenth chapter of St Luke :—Following the 
order which prevails in all things, between us and you the great 


346 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


chaos is fixed so that no one can pass from here to you, and 
from where you are no one can come here.—It is Abraham 
speaking to Dives, who answers:—I pray thee therefore, 
father, that thou wouldest send him (Lazarus) to my father’s 
house: for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto 
them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham 
saith unto him : They have Moses and the prophets; let them 
hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham : but if one 
went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said 
unto them, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither 
will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. 

This passage is infinitely remarkable and contains an entire 
revelation concerning the eternal and immutable order of the 
destinies of man. Here we see the force of nature which 
impels life forward and closes the door behind it so that it 
can never go back. The steps of the sacred ladder strengthen 
for ever under the feet of those who ascend them, and they 
cannot any more — do you understand thoroughly?— they 
cannot any more come down that they may return. 1 
Observe, too, that Abraham in no sense admits the possibility 
of the return of Lazarus on earth save by the way of resurrec¬ 
tion and not at all by spirit obsession. For, according to one 
of the great doctrines of the Kabbalah, the spirit unclothes 
itself to ascend, and re-clothes itself to come down. There 
is only one possible mode by which an already emancipated 
spirit can manifest afresh upon the earth; he must reassume 
his body and rise again. There is a vast difference between 
this and masquerading inside a table or a hat. This is 
why necromancy is horrible—it constitutes a crime against 
nature. Does not the necromancer in his audacity seek 
to shake the holy ladder and thus make the ascending 
spirits fall down ? 2 It is impossible, no doubt, and the 
sacrilegious worker will be confronted only by his own 
illusions. Moreover, the best theologians of the middle ages 
have taught that the dead remain irrevocably where the justice 
of God has sent them, and that the demon alone answers the 
call of the magician and takes the shape of the deceased 
person who is invoked, so that he may lead astray the human 


1 See Note 49. 


2 See Note 50. 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


347 


conscience and cheat sorcerers into the belief that they can 
disturb the empire of souls and of God as they please. This 
is to say, but in allegorical terms, precisely what we ourselves 
are now stating in the language of reason and science. The 
demon is madness, vertigo, error, the personification of all 
that is false and insensate. Here we extend to M. de Mirville 
a hand which he will certainly decline. Leave him his paste¬ 
board devil which he works like a jack-in-the-box throughout 
his portly volumes. M. de Mirville is a child. 

We insist here on the authority of the Gospels, and of 
theologians, because we are dealing with matters which are 
exclusively of the domain of faith. Science admits nothing 
which it is unable to demonstrate; now, science cannot 
demonstrate the continuity of human life after death. Hence 
it does not admit spirits. Science is purely human, and faith 
cannot reasonably testify that it is divine, unless it be im¬ 
mensely collective. It is this collective character which wins 
for beliefs the name of religion, otherwise, the moral bond 
which links men one with another. Science cannot deny the 
need man has of religion any more than it can deny the 
phenomena of great religious associations. Inasmuch as 
religion exists in the nature of man, it belongs to the science 
which studies man, but this science must confine itself to 
establishing the phenomena of faith without allowing itself to 
be influenced thereby. An isolated belief does not deserve 
the name of faith, which signifies confidence; to mistrust all 
authority and have confidence only in one’s self is to be a 
fool. The Catholic believes in the Church because the 
Church represents for him the flower of believers. Such is 
the justification of the faith of the charcoal-burner. Now, 
the charcoal-burner is a believer not only in matters of 
religion but should be also in matters of science: shall he 
deny or challenge the genius of Newton because he fails to 
understand his theorems ? I am not an expert in painting, 
but I should defer willingly therein to Ingres, to Paul 
Delaroche, and to Gigoux : while these great artists, who 
cannot be specialists in theology, in exegesis, in Kabbalah, 
would be unreasonable if in these matters they did not defer 
to men who are experts in these exalted sciences. I may 
not invariably comprehend their dicta on the arcana of 


348 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


painting ; why should they disturb themselves if my books 
for them do not always seem perfectly lucid ? It is enough 
for me that other persons of peculiar knowledge and judgment 
do understand them, and they may reasonably defer to those. 

Here is the foundation of faith. It is the trust of those 
who do not know in others who do, and as the formula of 
beliefs must always borrow from science the foundation of its 
hypotheses, as we cannot reasonably believe what is proved 
by science to be false, as it is indispensable that science 
should at least admit the possibility of hypotheses, as the 
hypotheses of faith are those which science confessedly can 
never convert into axioms or theorems, it follows that in 
matters of faith above all authority is necessary, and that this 
authority should be collective, hierarchic, and universal—in 
other words, Catholic—and this is what we have sought to 
prove. 

The faith of the middle ages is blind because it does not 
admit criticism, and does not base itself upon science; hence 
the rational faculty is weak and fancies flourish. Medicine, 
for example, dares not concern itself with the soul, and it is 
to the soul that mental derangements are attributed. Ac¬ 
cordingly hallucinated persons are regarded as inspired either 
by God or the devil; hysterical women are possessed; 
maniacs are souls whom God is leading by unsearchable 
paths. All is possible at such a period, all permissible in the 
order of the pseudo-supernatural, always excepting evocations, 
to which hell alone can respond, which disturb to no purpose 
the immutable order of nature and the eternal silence of the 
tombs. The Gospel affirms that the souls in heaven cannot 
again come down, and that the souls in hell cannot again rise 
up; those in purgatory remain, but these, being dedicated to 
expiation, can sin no more, and cannot consequently torment 
the living, or lead them into error. Purgatory, according to 
theologians, is a resigned hell because hope dwells therein. 
Therein souls suffer, therein they love, therein they pray, but 
they cannot come out from thence before the time decreed 
by eternal justice. What can there be in common between 
these eremites of expiation and of prayer and the garrulities, 
at times stupid and at times licentious, of conversational 
tables ? How even can the demon, that wild and grandiose 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


349 


personification of incorrigible pride and despair beyond all 
remedy, descend into the buffooneries of a harlequin or the 
moral platitudes of M. Prudhomme ? The devil of the 
middle ages plays rogue frequently, it must be admitted, but 
who does not discern here, behind the goat’s horns, the ears of 
the merry mother, of that gallic satire which at times credits 
God Himself with the follies of his ministers and turns both 
Beelzebub and Renard into a comic romance ? The devil, 
furthermore, has never ceased to make his abode in the 
consciences of bad priests, and the trickeries of the old 
sanctuaries reappear often enough, together with the old cries, 
in the temples of the new God. Did inexplicable noises 
break the silence in the heart of the country, they were souls 
clamouring for prayers, and prayers mean money for the 
priests. At other times incredible stories, ostensibly indi¬ 
cating a miracle, served really to conceal a crime ; we have 
only to cite in this connection the terrible legend of Eudes 
or Udo, Archbishop of Magdeburg. This prelate was too 
learned for his period, and would seemingly have begun the 
religious revolution reserved for the mediocre but determined 
genius of Luther, before the epoch marked out by Providence. 
He declared against the celibacy of the priesthood; he took 
an abbess from her cloister and made her his concubine 
almost publicly, until such time as he could make her his 
wife. The junior clergy began to waste themselves in 
scandalous ways ; the older priests were gloomy and expect¬ 
ant. A little while, and the Archbishop was found lifeless 
one morning in the choir of his cathedral; his head, severed 
from his body, grinned horribly in a pool of blood; the body 
was in a shirt; evidently the Archbishop had been dragged 
from his bed, carried into the Church, and there decapitated. 
Who were his executioners, or, rather, who were his assassins ? 
The trembling woman who shared his room declared that she 
had heard a terrible voice, crying in a kind of psalm-chant:— 

“ Cessa de ludo , 

Lusisti satis Udo ”— 

a barbarous couplet which might be translated : 

“ Bishop Udo, cease from play, 

End your farce and come away ! ” 


35 ° 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Then a secret door opened in the apartment and black men 
flung themselves on the prelate, whom they tore from his bed 
and dragged away with them. She saw and heard no further, 
for she swooned with terror. 

Now, there was a canon named Frederic in the chapter of 
the Cathedral of Magdeburg; he led the life of an ascetic 
and passed for a saint. On the night in question this canon 
was performing a vigil in the church, beseeching God un¬ 
ceasingly to put a period to the scandals of the prelate. Deep 
silence prevailed in the great nave; there was no moon in 
heaven, and the aged priest shuddered in the darkness of the 
night, wh£n the door of the sacristy opened suddenly amidst 
great clamour, and strange yellings, mingled with choking 
cries, were heard. A personage vested in white, and having 
great wings, came forward and lighted the candles on the 
high altar. Thereupon, Frederic could distinguish a man in 
the clutches of creatures like demons, after which his atten¬ 
tion was again attracted to the open door of the sacristy, 
through which a singular procession began to file into the 
church. The saintly guardians of the church of Magdeburg 
appeared at its head, distinguished by their traditional 
costume and legendary insignia; then came angels clothed in 
white, going before a woman of majestic mien, whose blue 
mantle and golden crown shewed her to be the Blessed 
Virgin; she was followed by other angels vested in black and 
red, St Michael appearing in the midst of them, armed with a 
great cutlass; lastly, encircled by acolytes bearing lighted 
torches, came a man crowned with thorns, and holding a long 
cross in his hand. All these clergy of the other world took 
their place in the choir. Christ, or he at least who repre¬ 
sented him, seated himself on the archiepiscopal throne, 
whereupon the demons began to accuse Udo, whom they 
held in the midst of them, bound and probably gagged. The 
guilty man had nothing to reply. The Mother of God 
assumed an appearance of praying for him, but when the 
demon spoke of the scandals of the prelate and of the seduced 
nun, she drew down her veil and retired with a gesture of 
disgust. The judge then made a sign to St Michael, the 
cutlass gleamed and fell, candles and torches were extin¬ 
guished at once, and the scene was swallowed up in darkness. 


KE Y OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


35i 


The canon Frederic asked himself whether he had been 
dreaming, and proceeded trembling into the choir. When he 
reached the foot of the altar, he felt that the steps were moist, 
and he stumbled over an inert mass. Even the altar lamps 
had gone out, and Frederic had to return to his cell before he 
could procure a light; fear and emotion, however, hindered 
him from going back into the church, and it was not till the 
morning that the Cathedral servants discovered the beheaded 
body when they opened its doors. The corpse of the accursed 
one was not interred in consecrated ground, the stains of his 
blood were not washed from the stones of the choir, but were 
covered with a carpet, and whenever a new Archbishop was 
installed he was solemnly conducted to the spot by the 
chapter and clergy; the carpet was raised up, and he was 
made to look upon the blood of the sacrilegious prelate Udo. 

Nothing in the sombre legends of the middle ages seems to 
us so appalling as this assassination attributed to Jesus Christ, 
and certainly if the barrier between the two worlds were not 
insuperable for those who ascend; if the Saviour Himself, 
without disturbing the eternal order of Providence, could still 
manifest His presence among us otherwise than in His 
Gospel and His Eucharist, would He not Himself have 
appeared to paralyze and overwhelm the actors in this 
infamous tragedy? Would He not have come to unbind and 
uplift the unfortunate Udo, saying to him, as to the woman 
taken in adultery: go in peace, and sin no more! Could 
spirits of another world arm themselves with material swords, 
to visit wrath on the guilty here, would Torquemada have 
kindled his pyres undisturbed! Would Alexander VI., who 
poisoned hosts, and abandoned himself publicly to incests— 
would not he have deserved decapitation at the hands of 
angels, rather than Udo of Magdeburg, and that not at 
night and in the secrecy of a deserted church, but in open 
day, urbi et arbi , before all Rome and the entire universe ? 
But to inflict death belongs to men, to plagues, to old age, 
and to disease. God is the father of life; he no more sends 
His angels to be servants at our scaffolds than his priests to 
be purveyors of hell. Interested trickery on the one hand, 
ignorance on the other, unexplained but not inexplicable 
phenomena—such are all the causes which justify the pre- 


35 2 


THE MYSTERIES OE MAGIC 


tended intervention of spirits during the period of the middle 
ages. The study of nature was then abandoned to a 
barbarous scholasticism; every one swore by Aristotle and 
the master of phrases; the fear of hell destroyed interest in 
this world, and the thought of death caused life to be 
neglected. Most persons are familiar with the history of the 
deacon Raymond to whom the dread of damnation occa¬ 
sioned a posthumous nightmare, which ended in the founda¬ 
tion of the Grande-Chartreuse by St Bruno. Were the terror 
of infernus at that time a test of sanctity, what man was 
holier than the unfortunate deacon Raymond ? Wrapped in 
a lethargy of fear which everyone regarded as death, he 
writhed three times in his shroud, and cried, springing up in 
his coffin: “I am accused! I am judged! I am damned! ” 
Then he collapsed, this time really killed by dread. The 
funeral ceremony was suspended thereupon, the candles were 
extinguished, and the body was flung hurriedly into uncon¬ 
secrated ground. Who knows if even then true death had 
ensued and whether the unfortunate being did not again 
come to life, this time beneath the earth, and destined to 
tear open his veins in despair when he returned finally to 
consciousness ! 

We have admitted the possibility of vampirism and have 
indeed sought to explain it. The phenomena now occur¬ 
ring in America and in Europe connect certainly with this 
frightful malady. Monomaniacs, like Sergeant Bertram, are 
incorrectly termed vampires when they are blindly driven 
to feed on the flesh of dead bodies; real vampires are dead 
persons who drink, and thus drain the blood of the living. It 
is true that mediums do not devour dead human flesh, but 
their whole nervous organism breathes forth the phosphorus 
of corpses or spectral light. They are not themselves vam¬ 
pires, but they evoke these. Hence they are all weak and 
sickly, feeble in mind as well as in body, and impelled blindly 
to hallucinations and madness. The enervating practices of 
evocation deplete them rapidly, and they fall into a slow 
consumption, like that of Dr Tissot, as a result of isolated 
proclivities. Spiritism is the onanism of souls. The law of 
Moses condemns to death those persons who consult the 
Oboth , that is to say, the phantoms of ob, or the passive light. 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


353 


This great legislator sought, by making severe examples, to 
save his people from the contagion of vampirism and the 
abysses of spectral hallucination. We doubt if even simple 
magnetic somnambulism would have found favour before 
him. We live no longer in the days of Moses, and the penal 
code of the Hebrew prophet is fortunately abrogated like that 
of Dracon. We have certainly no desire for the destruction 
of somnambulists and spiritists, but could our warnings, war¬ 
ranted by religion and science, prevent some of them from 
destroying themselves, our researches and labours would not 
be undertaken in vain. 

Let us now pass on to the question of possessed places and 
haunted houses, recognising at once the existence and reality 
of a large number of phenomena which favoured belief in this 
class of superstitions, above all in the middle ages. M. de 
Mirville cites many cases ; we refer our readers to his works, 
and will, on our own part, be contented with a single citation 
derived from an esteemed author of the fifteenth century, 
Alexander ab Alexandro, who writes thus:—“ It is a matter of 
universal notoriety, and familiar to all Rome, that I have not 
hesitated to live in a number of houses which everyone declined 
to rent because of the frightful manifestations of the dead which 
nightly occurred therein. In addition to the knockings, shak¬ 
ings, and screaming voices which disturbed our silence and 
made sleep impossible, we beheld in one case a hideous 
spectre, entirely black, which, although of the most menacing 
aspect, seemed to implore our help. So that no one may 
suspect me of devising a fable, I beg leave to cite the testi¬ 
mony of Nicholas Tuba, a man of excellence and authority, 
who requested permission to be present with some young 
people of his acquaintance and assure himself of the reality of 
the occurrences. They watched with us, and although lights 
were burning, they beheld in due time, and simultaneously 
with ourselves, the apparition of a phantom, together with its 
various actions, cries, and alarms, which over and over again 
made our companions believe, despite their courage, that 
they were about to become its victims. The whole house 
resounded with the groans of this spectre, and all rooms were 
infested at the same time; when, however, we approached it, 
it appeared to start back, and above all to fly the light which 


354 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


we carried. Lastly, after an indescribable riot of several hours, 
as the night drew to a close, the whole vision vanished. Of 
all the experiences which I passed through at this time, one 
deserves mention before all, for, to my mind, it was the 
greatest and most appalling of these prodigies. . . . The 
night had closed in, and, having fastened my door with a 
strong silken cord, I had retired to bed. I was not yet 
asleep, nor had I extinguished my light, when I heard the 
phantom make his customary clamouring at my door, and 
soon after, the door being still closed and fastened, I beheld 
him, incredible to say, effect an entrance into my chamber by 
the keyhole. He at once crept under my bed, whereupon my 
pupil, Mark, who had seen the whole manoeuvre, began utter¬ 
ing frightful cries for help. For myself, having regard to the 
fact of the closed door, I persisted in disbelieving what I had 
seen, when this terrible phantom stretched an arm out from 
under my bed and extinguished the light, whereupon he 
betook himself to overturning not only all my books but 
everything which was to be found in the room, uttering noises 
which froze the senses. The house being roused by all this 
riot, he perceived lights in the room which communicated 
with mine, by the door of which the phantom immediately 
made his escape. The most astonishing thing, however, was 
that he was not seen by the persons bearing the light.” 

M. de Mirville, who also cites this fact, adds the following 
remarks: “ Such phenomena, sketched briefly, are explained 
easily enough along general lines, but each case adds to the diffi¬ 
culty of the solution. Grant that Alexander was mad, but what 
about his pupil, his servant, and Tuba, and the young men, 
and the whole city of Rome which would tolerate the house 
no longer ? Had it a power of hallucination for the whole 
world ? What was this power which could not open the 
door on the outer side, and therefore came in by the keyhole, 
but opened it with no difficulty on the inner side ? ”—There 
is a typical characteristic of this history which M. de Mirville 
is unable to perceive, and that is an absolute want of logic 
and verisimilitude which connects it with hallucinations and 
dreams. A door fastened merely by a silken cord is more 
easy to open on the outer than on the inner side, 1 because the 
1 See Note 51. 


KEY OF MAGICAL PHENOMENA 


355 


cord might be broken by a push, but it is the opposite which 
happens, a spirit which enters by the keyhole does not need 
to open the door that he may escape, and takes needless 
pains in doing so. Furthermore, the apparition is not visible 
to everybody, for all that M. de Mirville affirms. The fact 
that the light was extinguished shews that the air of the room 
was vitiated ; the phantom arm was a vision in asphyxia ; the 
door once opened, a current of air entered, and the phantom 
vanished. The history as a whole may be compared with 
another which appeared a few years ago in the press. A house 
situated in a locality which was indicated, and belonging to 
persons who could be named if required, possessed a haunted 
room. A certain man of learning resolved to sleep in this 
room, and he slept there accordingly. About the middle of 
the night he became conscious of a frightful oppression, a 
pain in the stomach which seemed almost to tear him in 
pieces, and he beheld, amidst a phosphorescent radiance, the 
apparition of a hideous apple-green demon, seated on his 
chest and tearing out his entrails with his talons. His screams 
brought some one to his rescue, air was introduced into the 
room, and the man of learning, having recovered his self- 
possession, felt himself to be ill, and recognised the symptoms 
of arsenical poisoning. He was carried out of the fatal room, 
antidotes were administered, he recovered, and subsequently 
made a careful examination of the haunted chamber, which 
proved to have an apple-green paper coloured by a prepara¬ 
tion of arsenic. This explained everything; the paper was 
changed, and the murderous apparition was seen no more. 
By the close study of prodigies we discover the secret laws of 
nature. There is a house, for example, which has the power 
of attracting stones as the magnet does iron filings. It is 
strange assuredly, but so at first sight are the phenomena 
connected with the loadstone. It is found presently that 
there are magnets special to each of the three kingdoms of 
nature, and that the stone house attracts stones as Home, the 
Scotch medium, and the young peasant Angelica Cotin attract 
furniture. The life of man is communicated to everything that 
he uses and the prescriptions of the Bible prove that the con¬ 
tagion of leprosy attaches itself to buildings as well as to men. 
Why should there not be houses stricken by an ill-regulated 


35 ° 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


magnetism as there once were leprous houses? What is 
certain is that nature is harmonious and orderly, that she 
obeys laws which are rigorously exact in the result of their 
action, and that she at no time belies either her Author or 
herself. Her permanent miracle is eternal order. Transitory 
prodigies are accidents foreseen by universal harmony and no 
more prove the intervention of spirits than do meteors the 
existence of stars. Supreme reason is like the sun, and he is 
distraught who does not perceive it. 


PART IX 

KEY OF MODERN PHENOMENA 


I.—The Key of Mesmerism. 

Mesmer recovered the secret science of Nature, he was 
not its inventor. The primeval, one, and elementary sub¬ 
stance, the existence of which he proclaims in his Aphorisms, 
was known to Hermes and Pythagoras. Synesius, who 
celebrates it in his hymns, discovered its revelation among 
the Platonic reminiscences of the Alexandrian School. 
“A single source, a single root of light springs up and 
spreads out into three branches of splendour. An air 
circulates round the earth and vivifies, under innumerable 
forms, every portion of animated substance .” 1 

Animal magnetism is nothing else but an artificial sleep 
produced by the voluntary or enforced union of two souls, 
one of which is awake while the other is sleeping, that is, 
one of which directs the other in the choice of reflections 
so as to change dreams into visions and ascertain truth by 
means of images. The Astral Light has an immediate 
action on the nerves, which are conductors in the animal 
economy, and convey it to the brain ; so, in the somnam¬ 
bulistic state, it is possible to see by the nerves, without the 
need of radiating light, the astral fluid being a latent light, 
as physics have recognised the existence of latent caloric. 
Magnetism between two persons is undoubtedly a marvellous 
discovery, but the magnetizing of one person, whose will 
makes himself lucid, and the direction of one’s own clair¬ 
voyance, is the perfection of magical art; the arcanum of 

1 Hymns of Synesius, Hymn 2. 


3S7 



35 » 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


this magnum opus is not far to seek; it was known and 
made use of by a large number of initiates, and above all 
by the famous Apollonius of Tyana, who has left us a 
theory concerning it. The secret of magnetic lucidity, and 
the direction of the phenomena of magnetism, depend on 
two things—on the harmony of minds and the perfect 
union of wills in a possible direction and in a direction 
determined by science; this is for magnetism operated 
between several. Solitary magnetism demands the pre¬ 
parations we have detailed at the beginning when we 
enumerated and described in all their arduousness the 
requisite qualities for a veritable adept. 

If it have been up to the present almost impossible to 
direct the phenomena of magnetism, it is because no 
initiated and truly emancipated mesmerist has yet been 
found. Who, in fact, can flatter himself that he is such? 
Have we not always to make new efforts at self-control? 
It is certain all the same that Nature obeys the sign and 
command of one who feels strong enough not to doubt it. 
I say that she will obey, I do not say that she will belie her¬ 
self or that she will disturb the order of her possibilities. The 
cure of nervous disorders by a word, a breath, or a touch; 
resurrection in certain cases; resistance of evil wills sufficient 
to disarm and overthrow murderers; even the faculty of 
rendering one’s self invisible, by influencing the sight of 
those from whom it is important to escape—all these are 
natural effects of the projection or retention of the Astral 
Light. The magus-magnetist should command the natural 
medium, and, consequently, the astral body which estab¬ 
lishes communication between the soul and the organs; 
he can therefore say to the material body—“ Sleep ! ” and 
to the astral mediator—“ Dream ! ” Then visible objects 
change their appearance, as in opium visions. The Astral 
Light is projected by the glance, by the voice, by the 
thumbs and palms of the hand. Music is a powerful 
auxiliary of the voice, and hence comes the word enchant¬ 
ment. No musical instrument is more of an enchanter than 
the human voice, but the distant sounds of the violin or 
harmonica increase its efficacy. The subject whom it is 
desired to influence is thus prepared; then when he is half 


KE Y OF MODERN PHENOMENA 


359 


asleep, and as it were is enveloped in the charm, the hand 
must be extended towards him, he must be commanded to 
slumber or to see, and he will obey despite himself. If he 
resist, looking fixedly at him, one thumb should be placed on 
the forehead between the eyes, and the other thumb on his 
breast, touching him lightly with an even and rapid con¬ 
tact ; then slowly inhale or draw in the breath, softly exhale 
it, and repeat in a low voice—“ Sleep ! ” or “ Behold ! ” 

The human body is subject, like the earth, to a double 
law—it attracts and it radiates; it is magnetized by an 
androgyne magnetism, and reacts on the two powers of 
the soul, the intellectual and sensitive, in inverse ratio 
but in proportion to the alternated preponderances of the 
two sexes in the physical organism. The art of the 
magnetist is wholly in the knowledge and use of this law. 
To polarize the action, and give the agent a bi-sexual and 
alternated force, is the means still unknown and vainly 
sought of directing at will the phenomena of magnetism; 
but a tact well exercised, and great precision in the interior 
movements so as not to confound the signs of magnetic 
inbreathing with those of outbreathing, are of palmary 
importance; while the occult anatomy and individual 
temperament of persons under control must also be per¬ 
fectly known. What causes the greatest obstacle to the 
direction of magnetism is the bad faith or ill-will of 
subjects, of women above all, who are essentially and in¬ 
variably attitudinizing, who love to impress themselves by 
the impression of others, and are the first to be deceived 
when they act their nervous melodramas—this is the true 
black magic of magnetism. So is it impossible for operators 
uninitiated into the supreme arcana, and unassisted by the 
illumination of the Kabbalah, to ever govern this refractory 
and fugitive element. To be master of the woman we must 
divert and deceive her skilfully by permitting her to imagine 
that it is she who is deceiving us. 

There are two methods of magnetizing—firstly, operation 
on the will of the subject either by intimidation or by 
persuasion in such a manner that the impressed will shall 
modify, according to our desire, the plastic mediator and 
the actions of that person. Secondly, operation by the will 


3 6 ° 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


on the plastic mediator of another, whose will and acts 
are consequently subordinated to such action. 

There is magnetizing by radiation, by contact, by glance, 
and by speech. The vibrations of the voice modify the 
motions of the Astral Light and are a powerful instrument 
of magnetism. Warm breathing magnetizes positively and 
cold breathing negatively. By placing the right hand on 
the head and the left on the feet of a person wrapped in wool 
or silk, a magnetic spark passes through them, and a com¬ 
plete nervous revolution in the organism may be occasioned 
with the rapidity of lightning. Magnetic passes are useful 
only in directing the will of the mesmerist and confirming 
it by acts. They are signs and nothing more . 1 The act 
of will is expressed and not operated by such signs. 
Pulverized coal absorbs and retains the Astral Light, which 
explains the magic mirror of Du Potet. Figures drawn 
with charcoal appear luminous to a magnetized person, 
and assume for such, according to the direction determined 
by the will of the operator, the most attractive or terrifying 
forms. The astral or rather vital light of the plastic 
mediator absorbed by the charcoal becomes wholly negative, 
and this is why animals whom electricity tortures, as cats 
for example, like to roll among the ashes. Medicine will 
one day utilize this peculiarity, and nervous persons will 
find great benefit therefrom. 

In his “ Magic Unveiled ” the Baron Du Potet states, 
with some hesitation, that it is possible, by a powerful 
projection of the magnetic fluid, to kill a living being as if 
he were struck with lightning. Magic power extends further ; 
but it is not only the pretended magnetic fluid, it is the 
whole Astral Light, it is the element of electricity and of 
lightning, which can be placed at the disposal of the human 
will. What must be done to acquire this formidable power ? 
Zoroaster tells us: we must be acquainted with those 
mysterious laws of equilibrium which subject to the empire 
of good even the powers of evil themselves; we must have 
purified our body by holy trials, wrestled with the phantoms 
of hallucination, and grappled bodily with the light, as Jacob 


1 See Note 52. 


KE V OF MODERN PHENOMENA 361 


strove with the angel; we must have overcome those 
fantastic dogs which bark in dreams, and, in a word, 
according to the oracle’s energetic expression, we must 
have heard the light speak. Then shall we be master 
thereof, then shall we be able to turn it, like Numa, against 
the enemies of the sublime mysteries; but if we are not 
perfectly pure, if the ascendancy of some animal passion 
still subject us to the fatalities of the tempests of life, we 
shall be burned by the fire that we kindle and perish like 
Tullus Hostilius. 

It was the glory of Mesmer to have recovered, without 
an initiator and without occult knowledge, this universal 
agent of life and its prodigies; his “ Aphorisms,” which the 
scientists of his time could only look on as paradoxes, will 
become one day the basis of the physical synthesis. He 
recognised the existence of a primitive, fluidic, universal 
matter, capable of stability and motion, which, by becoming 
fixed, determines the constitution of substances, and by 
continual motion modifies and renews all forms. This 
fluidic matter is both active and passive; in the passive 
state it attracts itself; in the active condition it projects 
itself. Thereby the worlds and the living beings belonging 
to them draw and repel one another; it passes from one 
to another by means of a circulation which may be com¬ 
pared to that of the blood. It nourishes and renews the 
life of all beings, it is the agent of their power, and may 
become the instrument of their will. The phenomena of 
cohesion, elasticity, density, and rarefaction in bodies are 
produced by diverse combinations of the two properties 
inherent in the universal fluid or first matter. Disease, 
like all physical disorders, comes from a derangement of 
the normal equilibrium of the first matter in an organized 
body. Organized bodies are either in sympathy or antipathy 
with each other, according to their special equilibrium. 
Bodies /which are in sympathy can cure one another by 
mutually restoring equilibrium. The property in bodies 
of equilibrating each other by the attraction or projection 
of the first matter is termed magnetism by Mesmer, and as 
this first matter is specialized in accordance with the 
characteristics of the various classes of beings, and as 


362 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


animated nature was the object of his own studies, he 
terms it animal magnetism. Mesmer proved his theory 
by his works, and his experiments were crowned with 
complete success. Having observed the analogy which 
subsists between the phenomena of animal magnetism and 
those of electricity, he made use of metallic conductors 
which met in a common reservoir containing earth and 
water for the absorption and projection of the two forces. 
The complicated apparatus of the troughs has since been 
abandoned as it can be replaced by a living chain of hands 
imposed upon a circular non-conducting body such as a 
wooden table, silk, or wool. Subsequently Mesmer applied 
to living and organic beings the processes of metallic 
magnetization, and acquired a certitude of the reality and 
analogy of the resulting phenomena. Only one step remained 
for him to make; it was to declare that the effects attributed 
in physics to the four imponderable fluids are the manifesta¬ 
tions of a single force diversified in its applications, and 1 
that this force, inseparable from the first and universal 
matter, the motion of which it causes, now radiant, now ablaze, 
now electrical, and now magnetic, has but one name, indicated 
by Moses in Genesis, when he makes it appear, at the 
summons of the Almighty, before all substances, and all 
forms —Light ! 

It will be acknowledged later on, and we need not fear 
to establish it in advance, that the grand event of the 
eighteenth century was not the Encyclopaedia, it was not 
the scornful and derisive philosophy of Voltaire, it was not 
the negative metaphysics of Diderot and of d’Alembert, it 
was not the rancorous philanthropy of Rousseau, but the 
miraculous and sympathetic physics of Mesmer. Mesmer 
is great as Prometheus, he gave men that fire from heaven 
which Franklin could only deflect! 

II.— Mysteries of Hallucination. 

A hallucination is an illusion occasioned by an irregular 
movement of the astral light. It is a blending of the 
phenomena of sleep with those of the waking state. Our 
plastic mediator inhales and breathes out the astral light 


KE Y OF MODERN PHENOMENA 363 

or vital soul of the earth after the same manner that our body 
breathes forth and draws in the terrestrial atmosphere. Now, 
in precisely the same way that the air of certain localities 
is impure and unfit for respiration, so also phenomenal 
circumstances may render the astral light unwholesome and 
unfit to assimilate. Moreover, a given air may be too 
keen for some persons, though it will be perfectly well- 
suited to others, and the same rule applies to the magnetic 
light. 

The plastic mediator resembles a metallic statue in a 
permanent state of fusion. If the mould be defective, the 
statue is deformed; if it be broken, the contents are spilt. 
The mould of the plastic mediator is equilibrated and 
polarized vital force. By means of the nervous system our 
body attracts and retains this fugitive form of the specialized 
light, but local fatigue or partial over-excitement of the 
apparatus may occasion fluidic deformities. Such deformities 
partially distort the mirror of the imagination, and occasion 
the habitual hallucinations peculiar to static visionaries. 

The plastic mediator is made in the form and likeness 
of our body, and duplicates luminously all its members, 
having sight, touch, hearing, smell, taste, all proper to itself; 
under the influence of over-excitement it can communicate 
these by vibrations to the nervous mechanism, causing a 
complete hallucination. Then imagination seems victorious 
over nature itself, and produces phenomena that are truly 
extraordinary. The material body submerged by the fluidic 
seems to share in the qualities of the latter; the laws of 
gravity are suspended; it becomes invulnerable for the 
moment, and may even be invisible in a circle hallucinated 
by contagion. It is well known that the convulsionaries 
of Saint Medard at their own desire were pierced with nails, 
beaten, tortured, even crucified without any suffering; in 
like manner, they were lifted up from the earth, walked 
head downwards, ate twisted pins and could digest them. 

Now, there exists a force by which forms are generated, 
and this force is the light. The light creates forms according 
to eternally mathematical laws, by the universal equilibrium 
of light and shade. Thus, all things are the work of the 
light. There the form is preserved, and thereby it is repro- 


3^4 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


duced. The vibrations of this light are the principle of the 
universal movement. It is the light which binds the suns 
one to another and intertwines their rays like electric chains. 
Men and inanimate objects also are like the suns endowed 
with the magnetic quality of the light, and, by means of 
electro-magnetic chains created by affinities and sympathies, 
they can communicate with each other at opposite ends of 
the world, can embrace or assault one another, heal or wound, 
and all this naturally enough without doubt, though the means 
are not visible and the result seems astounding. Herein is 
the secret of magic, first of the sciences, heritage of the 
magi; of all knowledge most holy, because it establishes the 
grand truths of religion in the most sublime manner, and yet 
at the same time the most slandered of all because the vulgar 
man persists in confounding it with the abominable practices 
of sorcery. 

Where is the beginning and where the limit of possibility 
in the order of magical miracles? Here is a serious and 
important question. What is certain is the existence of facts 
which are consistently regarded as miraculous. Magnetizers 
and somnambulists perform them all the year round; thou¬ 
sands and tens of thousands bear witness to the wonders of 
American mediums. Are all these persons dupes or im¬ 
postors ? Hallucinated they possibly are, but the fact of their 
collective hallucination, or their hallucination simultaneous 
when it is separate and not collective, is not that itself some¬ 
thing astonishing and miraculous? To perform miracles or 
to persuade the multitude that one does perform them are 
almost one thing, more especially at a period so trifling and 
cynical as our own. Now, the world is full of thaumaturgists, 
and science is frequently reduced to denying their perform¬ 
ances or refusing to witness them so that it may avoid their 
examination and the attempt to discover their cause. 

In the last century all Europe echoed with the prodigies of 
Cagliostro. Who does not know of the tremendous virtues 
which he attributed to his Egyptian wine and his elixir? 
Who can add anything to all the tales of his necromantic 
suppers where he brought up the illustrious departed in actual 
flesh and blood ? At the same time Cagliostro was far from 
being an initiate of the first order, for the great association of 


KE Y OF MODERN PHENOMENA 365 


adepts abandoned him to the Roman Inquisition. Miracles, 
however, are not the exclusive privilege of the highest grade 
of initiates, and are often brought to pass by persons devoid 
of either knowledge or virtue. Certain natural laws find an 
opportunity for exercise in an organism of an exceptional 
character, though its special difference escapes us, and they 
perform their work precisely and peacefully as always. The 
progress of human knowledge has sensibly diminished the 
opportunities of marvels, but an enormous number still 
remain, for the power of imagination and the nature and 
power of magnetism are still unknown. The observation of 
universal analogies has been neglected, and for this reason 
there is no longer any faith in divination. 

An instructed Kabbalist can therefore still astonish the 
vulgar and even confuse the cultured by—1. Divining things 
secret. 2. Predicting things to come. 3. Overruling the 
will of others in such a manner as to prevent them doing 
what they wish, and causing them to perform what they do 
not wish. 4. Producing apparitions and dreams at pleasure. 
5. Curing a large number of complaints. 6. Bringing to life 
persons who are dead to all appearance. 7. Demonstrating, 
physically if need be, the actuality of the philosophical stone 
and the transmutation of metals according to the arcana of 
Abraham the Jew, Flamel, and Raymond Lully. All these 
prodigies are brought about by means of that one agent which 
we have termed the astral light. By its various modes of 
magnetization, this agent attracts us one to another or repels 
us one from another, submits one to another’s will by causing 
him to enter into the other’s circle of attraction, establishes or 
upsets equilibrium in the animal economy by its transmuta¬ 
tions and alternating currents, receives and transmits the 
impressions of that imaginative power which is the image and 
resemblance of the creative word in man, and thus produces 
presentiments or determines dreams. The science of miracles 
is therefore the science of this marvellous force, and the art 
of performing miracles is simply the art of magnetizing or 
illuminating persons according to the invariable laws of mag¬ 
netism and the Astral Light. We prefer this word “light” 
to that of “magnetism,” because it is more traditional in 
occultism and expresses in a more complete and perfect 


3 66 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


manner the nature of the secret agent. There, truly, is the 
fluid and potable gold of the masters in alchemy. “What 
seek you ? ” was the question addressed to the postulants in 
all initiations. The required answer was, “ To behold the 
light.” The name of “illuminated,” given commonly to 
adepts, has thus been generally misinterpreted by imparting 
thereto a mystic sense, as if it signified the illumination of the 
understanding with a supernatural light. The illuminated 
are simply those who know and those who possess the light, 
whether by the knowledge of the great magical agent or by 
a rational and ontological notion of the absolute. 

The universal agent is vital force subordinated to intelli¬ 
gence. Left to itself, it devours all it brings forth, like 
Moloch. It is then the infernal serpent of ancient myths, 
and hence the devil exists in a very real manner for the 
Kabbalists, but it is neither a person nor a power distinct 
from the powers of Nature; it is the unreined horse which 
throws its rider, so that both fall into the abyss. It is the 
digression or sleep of intelligence; it is folly and false¬ 
hood. 

All really strong men are magnetizers, and the universal 
agent is subject to their will. It is thus that they work 
wonders, make themselves believed, make themselves fol¬ 
lowed, so that when they affirm anything, nature, so to 
speak, changes in the eye of the vulgar, and becomes what 
the great man has willed it. This is my flesh and this is 
my blood, said a man who by his virtues made himself 
God, and for the space of eighteen centuries, in the presence 
of a particle of bread and a cup of wine, men have seen, 
touched, tasted, adored the flesh and blood divinised by 
martyrdom. Can any one affirm that human will has never 
accomplished miracles? When the kings of France were 
environed by the veneration of their people, when they were 
regarded as the Lord’s anointed and the eldest sons of the 
church, then did they cure the king’s evil. Cagliostro might 
be merely a charlatan, but when opinion saluted him by the 
name of the divine Cagliostro, he should then be a worker 
of miracles, which is exactly what came to pass. When 
Cephas Barjona was only a Jew proscribed by Nero, who 
dispensed a specific for life eternal to the wives of slaves, 


KE V OF MODERN PHENOMENA 367 


then Cephas Barjona, for all cultured Romans, was nothing 
but a charlatan ; but opinion converted the empirical 
spiritualist into an apostle, and the successors of Peter, 
be they Alexander VI., or even John XXII., are infallible 
for all well-bred persons who will not subject themselves 
without object to social proscription. So goes the world. 
Hence, when successful, in magic as in all things else, 
charlatanism is a great instrument of power. To fascinate 
the crowd skilfully, is not that already to rule it ? 

Hence also the first science for the practical Kabbalist 
is that of men. Phrenology, psychology, chiromancy, 
observation of tastes and movements, of intonations, of 
sympathetic and antipathetic impressions, are branches of 
this art, and they were by no means neglected among the 
ancients. There is no vice which does not leave its trace, no 
virtue which does not possess its sign, and hypocrisy is there¬ 
fore impossible for trained eyes. The prediction of the chief 
events of life also becomes possible by the numerous ana¬ 
logical probabilities which the power of observation discerns; 
but there exists further a faculty which is distinguished as that 
of presentiment or sensitiveness. Events as yet unfulfilled 
frequently exist in their cause before they are realized in 
actions ; now, sensitives perceive such events in their causes 
beforehand; indeed, most astonishing predictions have pre¬ 
ceded all great events. 

The magnetic light which causes the future to be foreseen 
also occasions the divination of the secret things of the 
present; and as it is universal life, so also it is the agent of 
human sensibility, transmitting to one person the diseases 
or health of another, according to the blind influence of 
contact or the laws of will. This explains the virtue of 
blessings and of bewitchments, so especially recognized by 
great adepts, and above all by the marvellous Paracelsus. 
For them it was one of those traditional means about which 
there was an etiquette of secrecy, and it was closely connected 
with a doctrine reserved exclusively for initiates by Paracelsus 
but discovered by ourselves after deciphering the Kabbalistic 
characters and allegories which he makes use of in the collec¬ 
tion of his works. It is this: The human soul is material, 
the divine mens is offered it to immortalize it that it may 


368 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


live spiritually and individually, but its natural substance is 
fluidic and collective. 

Hence there are two kinds of life in man, the individual or 
reasonable, and the common or instinctive. By the last it 
is possible for us to live in one another, since the universal 
soul of which each nervous organism has a separate conscious¬ 
ness is the same for all. We live the common and universal 
life during the period of gestation, in ecstacy, and in sleep. 
This identity of the physical life makes it possible for stronger 
wills to take possession of the existence of others and to make 
use of them as auxiliaries; explains the influence of sympa¬ 
thetic currents, whether close at hand or at a distance; and 
explains the whole secret of occult medicine, because the 
principle of this medicine is the grand hypothesis of universal 
analogies, and, attributing all the phenomena of physical life 
to the universal agent, insists on the necessity of operating 
upon the astral body in order to react upon that body which 
is materially visible; it teaches further that the essence of the 
astral light is a double movement of attraction and projection; 
and even as human bodies attract and repel one another, they 
can also absorb one another, penetrate and permeate one 
another, and make exchanges in common. The ideas or 
imaginations of one can influence the form of another and 
react ultimately upon the exterior body. Man formulates the 
light by his imagination; he attracts to himself a sufficient 
proportion of the light to provide appropriate forms to his 
thoughts or even to his dreams; but if this light overwhelm 
him, if he submerge his understanding in the forms which he 
evokes, he becomes then a fool. The forms which an over¬ 
excited imagination produces to mislead the understanding 
are as real as the registers of photography. The phantoms 
of dreams, and even the dreams of persons who are awake, 
are therefore real images which exist in the light. There are, 
moreover, contagious hallucinations, and there is something 
also which is beyond ordinary hallucination, for if the images 
which are attracted by diseased brains have a certain measure 
of reality, may not those brains project them on to the exterior 
plane, where they will seem real in the same degree ? And if 
so projected by the nervous organism of a medium, may they 
not affect the organisms of those who, by an act voluntary or 


KE Y OF MODERN PHENOMENA 369 

otherwise, enter into nervous sympathy with the medium? 
They may be touched as well as seen, being half illusion and 
half nervous and magnetic force. And now an observation : 
All who suffer from luminous congestion and contagious 
somnambulism die violently, and suddenly if not violently, or 
become fools and idiots. Magnetic diseases are themselves 
an introduction to madness, and originate always in a morbid 
enlargement or wasting away of the nervous system. They 
resemble hysteria, which is one of their varieties, and they 
are often produced either by the excessive abstinence of the 
celibate, or by its opposite, undue indulgence. It is not 
known how close is the connection between the brain and 
those organs which are charged by nature with the accom¬ 
plishment of its noblest works—those, namely, which have 
the reproduction of the species in view. The sanctuary of 
nature is not to be violated with impunity. No one raises 
the veil of the great Isis except at the peril of his life. 
Nature is chaste, and it is unto chastity that she gives the 
Keys of life. To give way to impure love is to espouse death. 
Liberty, the life of the soul, is preserved only in the order of 
nature. It is wounded by all voluntary disorder; it is destroyed 
by prolonged excess. Then, instead of being guided and 
preserved by reason, one is abandoned to the fatalities of the 
flux and reflux of the magnetic light, which devours without 
ceasing because it creates continually, and because in order 
to produce always it must absorb eternally. Hence come 
homicidal mania and suicidal incentive. 

There exists a doctrine ; a key also exists; and there is, 
further, a sublime tradition. This doctrine, this key, this 
tradition, is transcendent magic. There only will be found 
the absolute of science and the eternal basis of law, the anti¬ 
dote to all folly, superstition, and error, the Eden of the 
understanding, rest of heart, and peace of soul. 

III.— Modern Spiritism. 

The existence of the universal magnet specialized in metals, 
plants, animals, and men, was known to the ancient hiero¬ 
phants. To that mysterious force the names of Od, Ob, and 
Aour, were given among the Jews. It is the double vibration 


37° 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


of the universal and vital light—astral light in the stars, 
magnetic light in stones and minerals, animal magnetism in 
animals and men. Everything in Nature reveals its existence. 
The experiments of Mesmer and his successors have proved 
that animal magnetism can communicate to inert objects the 
life and will of man. There is, therefore, small room for 
astonishment at the phenomenon, so frequent in our own days, 
of speaking and moving tables ; but ignorance loves to be 
surprised, because surprise makes it wonder, and wonder 
enchants it; then it has no wish to be disillusionized, and will 
not hear the simple truth-speakers. Nearly the whole truth 
on the phenomena of table-turning is most simply and clearly 
expressed in the letter of an anonymous savant which is cited 
by M. Morin. 

“ Be sure,” says this savant, “ that there are neither spirits, 
nor the souls of the dead, nor angels, nor demons, in the 
tables; but all these may be there if you wish it, when 
you wish it, and how you wish it, since it depends on your 
imaginativeness, your temperament, and your private opinions 
old or new. Mensambulance is only a phenomenon ill 
observed by the ancients, misunderstood by the moderns, yet 
perfectly natural; it concerns physics on the one part and 
psychology on the other, but it was inexplicable before the 
discovery of electricity and heliography, because, in order to 
explain a fact in the psychical order, we are forced to lean on 
the corresponding fact in the material order, as the ancient 
poets did in their comparisons and the prophets in their 
parables. 

“Now, it is well known that the daguerrotype has not only 
the faculty of receiving impressions from objects but also from 
the images of objects, and the phenomenon under considera¬ 
tion, which could well be called mental photography, does not 
only produce realities but also the dreams of our imagination, 
with such fidelity that we are occasionally deceived, being un¬ 
able to distinguish between a copy from life and a proof taken 
from the image. It will be said that this mental photography 
is a very extraordinary thing, and as much was declared of 
ordinary photography, but we have since grown familiar with 
it. It will be the same with the later discovery ; we shall be¬ 
come accustomed to it and each of us will be able to try his 


KE Y OF MODERN PHENOMENA 


37 1 

hand at the tables as others at the daguerrotype, some success¬ 
fully, some badly, for a number of indispensable precautions 
and conditions are required to ensure success. The first hair¬ 
brained and clumsy person who comes to it is no more quali¬ 
fied to obtain a ‘ good test ’ on one side than on the other. 

“The magnetizing of a card-table and of a person is absolutely 
identical; it is the invasion of a foreign body by the intelligent 
vital electricity, or by the thoughts of the magnetist and his 
assistants. Nothing can afford a more just and easily grasped 
idea of it than the electric machine collecting the fluid on its 
conductor, to obtain therefrom a third force, which is mani¬ 
fested in outbursts of light, etc. Thus electricity accumulated 
on an isolated body acquires an energy of reaction equal to 
the action, whether for magnetism, decomposition, enkindling, 
or the despatch of its vibration to a distance. These- are 
the sensible effects of blind as distinguished from intelli¬ 
gent electricity, which corresponds to the former, and is 
produced by the cerebral pile of man. This electricity of the 
soul, this spiritual and universal ether, which is the ambient 
medium of the metaphysical or incorporeal world, needs to be 
investigated before being admitted by science, which knows 
nothing of the great phenomenon of life beyond. 

“ Cerebral electricity, which, for myself and my co-workers, 
is no longer a matter of hypothesis, seems to require, before 
it can be manifested to the senses, the help of ordinary 
statical electricity, so that when this is wanting in the atmo¬ 
sphere, as when the air is full of moisture, no motion can be 
obtained in the tables, which will clearly tell you on the 
morrow what they lacked the previous day. 

“The intelligence of the table is the sum, or, if it be 
preferred, the reflection of the intelligence of those who 
magnetize it, it may be even said of a whole assembly which 
is attentive and united in sentiments and opinions. At other 
times it is only the repercussion of the ideas of a single 
person, whose will is stronger, who can arrest or quicken the 
table at a distance, and can impose on it any sequence of 
ideas which may please him. There is no need that the 
ideas should be consciously in the brain of the sitters; the 
table discovers and formulates them of itself, and always 
in suitable terms ; it frequently requires time to accomplish 


372 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


certain crambos; it begins a verse, erases it, corrects or 
inverts it, quite after our own fashion. If the sitters are 
sympathetic and on good terms with one another, it trifles, 
jokes, and laughs with us like an educated talker; it joins in 
the general tone of the conversation ; it is a social spirit; but 
if we ask it for an epigram on an absent person it offers us a 
plagiarism; and as for things of the other world, it is as full 
of conjectures as we are; it makes up its little philosophical 
systems, discussing and sustaining them with the most crafty 
eloquence. In a word, it contrives for itself a reason and a 
conscience out of materials found in ourselves. 

“All this may appear fantastic and incredible in the ex¬ 
treme, but after investigation observers besides ourselves will 
come to the same conclusion. The Americans are convinced 
that the dead return, others that angels and demons do so, 
and to each group comes the reflection of his own precon¬ 
ceived belief; so the initiates of the temples of Serapis, 
Delphos, and other theurgico-medical establishments of the 
same kind, were assured beforehand that they entered into 
communication with the deities adored in each sanctuary, 
which never failed to take place. To us who know the value 
of the phenomenon, nothing ever occurs which we are unable 
to explain without difficulty in accordance with our principles ; 
we are absolutely certain that after charging a table with our 
magnetic influx, we have created an intelligence analogous to 
our own, which possesses free-will like ourselves, can converse 
and dispute with us with a superior degree of lucidity, because 
the mass is stronger than the individual, as the whole is 
greater than the part. 

“ The most favourable condition is to have children almost 
without mental influence as our only collaborateurs ; then it 
is almost as if one stood alone in the presence of his con¬ 
science and in private conversation with himself, save that 
the ephemeral reasoner formulates what exists in our own 
conscience in a merely chaotic or nebulous state. There is 
no response in all the ancient oracles that does not find its 
natural explanation in the theory the key of which we give 
here. Christianity, which undertook to deliver the world 
from superstitious beliefs, discerning their dangers and 
inanities, though without discovering their cause, had great 


KE Y OF MODERN PHENOMENA 


373 


battles to fight for the extinction of oracles and sibyllism, and 
had to employ something more than persuasion, the Inquisi¬ 
tion itself having no other end in view. Read Ammianus 
Marcellinus, the persecution of the consulters of tables, 
instituted by early Christian emperors, and the sermons of 
Tertullian on those who interrogated Capellas et Mensas. No 
less than seventeen centuries and a half were required to 
exterminate the sorcerers by fire and sword; the last survivors 
were Urbain Grandier and Cagliostro, but the phenomenon, 
being natural, reappeared, now under the form of the convul- 
sionaries of St Medard, now under that of the hallucines of 
St Paris, to the reality of which Talleyrand bore witness in 
his youth, he himself having crucified a sybil with the help of 
the Abbe de Lavauguillon without doing her any injury. 
Mesmer resuscitated the same thing. The phenomenon is, 
indeed, as old as man. The Indian and Chinese priests 
practised it before the Egyptians and Greeks; it is known to 
the Esquimaux; it is W\e phenomenon of Faith , that source of 
all prodigies; when faith grows weak, miracles disappear. He 
who said, ‘ By faith ye may move mountains,’ would not have 
been surprised at a table being lifted. By faith the mesmerist 
charms away rheumatism, and rural shepherds obtained from 
the end of their crooks, as we from the feet of our tables, 
responses analogous to the personal beliefs of the questioners, 
and were as much astounded at finding their thoughts, in¬ 
stincts and feelings thus formulated, as the savage is amazed 
at beholding his likeness reflected in a looking-glass. The 
worst off are those who think they are having commerce with 
the devil, who re-echoes their fancies, and sometimes the state 
of their conscience. 

‘ Glassed- in the table, man so monstrous seems 
At times, that he himself the demon deems.’ 

“ The greater the number of believers joined in any single 
faith about a table, the more the pile is charged, and the more 
powerful and wonderful are the results. The primitive Chris¬ 
tians gathered round the holy table to communicate with God 
and they beheld God, as those who believe in r magic and sorcery 
see sorcery and enchantments everywhere. The guests at 
Belshazzar’s feast beheld the menace which originated in their 


374 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


consciences against the author of such orgies reproduced on 
the walls, and nothing more. Those who believe in appari¬ 
tions, in phosphorescent lights, in mysterious noises, are 
equally provided for in harmony with their notions, for it is 
rendered to every man according to his faith. 

“ Man is a microcosm or little world ; he bears within him 
a portion of the great whole in a chaotic state. The task of 
our semidei is to disentangle that part which is due to them by 
incessant mental and physical labour. They must fulfil their 
service by the continual invention of new products, new 
moralities, and set in order the coarse and formless materials 
distributed by the Creator, who made them in His own image 
that they in turn may create and may complete the work of 
creation—a vast labour which will only be accomplished when 
the whole shall have attained such a height of perfection that 
it will be like to God and worthy to survive to itself. We are 
far from this final moment, for it may be said that everything 
has still to be made, remade, and finished here below— 
institutions, systems, and products. 

Mens non solum agitat sed creat molem. 

“We exist in life, that ambient intellectual medium which 
nourishes a necessary and perpetual solidarity in man and 
things ; each brain is a ganglion, a station of the universal 
neuralgic telegraph, constantly en rapport with the central 
station, and with all others, by means of thought-vibrations. 
The spiritual sun enlightens souls as the material sun illumines 
bodies, for the universe is double and follows the law of 
couples. The ignorant station-holder misinterprets the divine 
despatches and often renders them in a false and ridiculous 
sense. Therefore, education and true science can alone 
destroy superstitions, and the nonsense sown broadcast by 
ignoramus interpreters placed in the stations of instruction 
among all the peoples of the earth. These blind interpreters 
of the Logos have always sought to impose on their disciples 
the obligation of judging without examination in verba magistri. 
We would ask no more, alas ! if they would interpret exactly 
the interior voices which deceive false minds alone. ‘ It is 
for us,’ they declare, ‘ to disentangle the oracles ; that mission 
is exclusively ours, spiritus flat ubi vult> and it breathes only 


KE Y OF MODERN PHENOMENA 


375 


on us.’ No, it breathes everywhere, and the beams of spiritual 
light enlighten every conscience, but as there are owls that 
fly the day, there are also refracting bodies and many which 
are destitute of the reflecting power. These are indeed the 
majority. O when all souls and bodies shall equally reflect 
the two-fold light, how far clearer shall we see then than 
to-day! ” 

We believe with the savant of M. A. Morin that present 
phenomena are opening for us the way to the greatest and 
most important discoveries. This mental photography of 
current ideas is of immense value in revealing the great com¬ 
munion of life. One soul does in fact sustain life throughout 
the whole of Nature. It is active in intelligent creatures and 
passive in others. Now, the active acts on the passive and 
borrows its strength; man can appropriate the strength of the 
lion, the agility and cunning of the ape; he can also impose 
his own thought on both and make use of them as instruments 
—all this is a question of magnetism. Do you think the great 
painter, for example, finds the colours which glow on his 
canvas in the wares of the artists’ colourman ? No, his genius 
commands the sun, which yields its reflections to him. In¬ 
tellectual omnipotence is a magic, and matter placed at the 
disposal of mind becomes itself intelligence. Day stands in 
need of night in order to shew itself, and 

“ Apollo’s time of abdication comes, 

We know what genius now to call on most ; 

Its virtue All the World, ’tis No One named ; 

They best dispense it who possess it not, 

Just as the magnet’s positive effect 
Its constant agent finds in pole opposed. 

Dumb Nature speech inspires, wide ignorance 
Creates the symbol, in a single word, 

The man of genius is perchance that man 
Who most attracts the mind of all the fools.” 

We do not yet know the powers of which human magnetical- 
ness can dispose, and when the prodigies of faith become the 
conquests of science, man, enthroned above all superstitions, 
will have taken his place in the universe, will know that he is 
born to command Nature, and is the plenipotentiary of God 
here below. 


376 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


But, returning to Spiritism, something strange and unheard 
of seems now taking place in the world. Christianity, by 
fixing all our hopes in death, disgusted men with life, and 
here a new belief seems trying to reconcile us to existence by 
annihilating death. For spiritists, in fact, there is no death. 
Life present and life to come, barely divided by a thin parti¬ 
tion which spirits can pass through, are henceforth one and 
the same life. We are surrounded by those we loved, they 
touch us, make signals to us, write to us, walk with us, and 
bear half our burdens. At times even their hands become 
visible and palpable to clasp our own. No more tears shed 
over tombs, no more wailing, no more funereal wreaths in 
memory of those who are no more, for so far from having 
ceased to exist they are living more truly than we are. The 
old broken-down wall which once separated definitely the two 
existences of man, is like the partition which divided the 
dwellings of Pyramus and Thisbe; it permits speech to pass 
between, it does not even prevent kisses. All this is so 
specious, so astounding, so beautiful, that we easily allow our¬ 
selves to be possessed by a flattering credulity, and do not 
sufficiently reflect to perceive that the pretended new religion 
destroys the cultu* and the hierarchy, snaps the golden chain 
of tradition, renders the priesthood useless, deprives morality 
of its eternal sanction, overturns the temple for the tomb’s 
profit, and substitutes for the sacraments of the living the 
doubtful and problematic contact of the dead. In these 
multiplied evocations reason is fatigued, faith materialized, the 
severe grandeurs of theology are transformed into romantic 
and sentimental trivialities, a Christ as ridiculous as Renan’s 
is talked of, and a Virgin Mary who comes every evening to 
kiss the withered and toothless mouth of the old man Girard 
de Caudemberg. In the same way that solar photography 
reproduces with infuriating fidelity the blemishes and scars on 
a face, this astral photography reproduces the nothingness of 
silly conversations, the temerity of conjecture, and the follies 
of idiotic thoughts. The medium Rose evokes Madame 
Lafarge and makes her acknowledge her guilt—an impious 
outrage on the grave of an unfortunate Woman, whose memory, 
protected by a doubt, concerns the honour of an honourable 
family, some of whose members still live and believe in her 


KEY OF MODERN PHENOMENA 


377 


innocence. By the side of enormities like this, we find from 
the pencil of mediums pages which may not have been actually 
written before, though they appear familiar, so much do these 
verbiages resemble one another, Sometimes the pretended 
spirit naively copies from an author whom, doubtless, he 
thinks little known. The writer of this book was one day 
astonished at finding in a number of La Verite , a spiritualistic 
journal published at Lyons, a page from the introduction to 
his “ History of Magic,” under the signature of Plato. The 
pencil writes dull and vapid songs which it attributes to 
Beranger, and ridiculous discourses which it fathers on 
Lacenaire; it is a tohu-bohu of pretentious stupidities and 
mutilated reminiscences, it is the Sabbath of the most 
drivelling devils imaginable, it is a chaos of extravagances. 
Then, by the side of all this, are observations full of keenness, 
bold hypotheses, and real fragments of science sewn up with 
the old pack-thread of Tabarin or Jocrisse. Apollonius 
Tyaneus writes Saint-Simonian tirades and signs them St 
Augustine; St Augustine declaims against the Church 
Catholic; St Louis talks like Jean Journet; St Vincent de 
Paul speechifies; it is altogether the anarchic noise of mobs, 
the madness of crowds, the confusion of multitudes photo¬ 
graphed while in motion ; it is the impersonal and multiple 
spirit which idiotically drowns the animals it seeks refuge 
in, that spirit whose name is legion and is everywhere driven 
out by the gentle influence of the Word of Truth. 

In the opposite camp, M. de Mirville blows the infernal 
trumpet and proclaims the reign of Satan. M. Gougenot 
Desmousseaux, his double, offers him the aspergillus to exor¬ 
cise the Prince of Darkness. Insults rain down in place of 
holy water : the Voltairean strong-minded absurdly deny facts 
to avoid investigating causes. The respectable M. Velpeau 
explains by a slight cracking of the muscles of the calf those 
blows which break tables and almost demolish walls. For 
many people still, Home, the American, is only a skilful 
conjurer; a greater number shrug their shoulders and will 
hear nothing on the subject, while true science, in the midst 
of all this chaos, grave, silent, and dejected, is studying, 
observing, and waiting. 

Luther one day had a visit from a spirit, whether white or 


378 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


black the reformer does not tell us ; but he believed it, never¬ 
theless, to be the devil. And behold the devil arguing with 
the monk, and the monk convinced by his arguments, and 
so came the Reformation into the world! Spiritists and 
table-turners, this is your whole history. A voice addresses 
you, you know not whose it is ; often your pretended reve¬ 
lations swarm with falsehoods and contradictions; yet you 
think yourselves free of the hierachy, and that you know mo,re 
than your cure and the Pope. The world beyond is revealed 
to you directly or by the mediation of beings beneath your¬ 
selves, diseased and ignorant or insane creatures, who are 
entranced and know not what they write, yet behold you are, 
like Israel, strong against God ! You arrange eternal dogma 
as you please; you deny this, admit that; you invent fantastic 
paradises and an endurable perdition; you retail cheap 
morality along with all this, for it certainly looks well, and 
carries no obligation along with it. 

Thus, after the thunders of the prophets, after the glories of 
the apostles, after the splendours of the fathers, after the 
patient, laborious, but incomplete reasoning of the scholastic 
philosophers, after the despairing courage of reformers and 
philosophy, God, at the end of His resources, sends talking- 
tables to spell out in jumps the indecent saying of Cam- 
bronne, an accommodating seasoning of idiotic doctrines and 
an encouragement to intellectual onanism. Is it God? No, 
it is the God you have made for yourselves who is reduced 
to such paltry expedients ! Yet you pass before Bedlam 
without taking your hat off and repeating that passage in 
Scott— 

“ This is my own my native land ! ” 

Faith in God is the firm adhesion of the soul to the 
necessary hypotheses of the understanding. Faith in Jesus 
Christ and in His Church is the soul’s firm adherence to the 
necessary hypotheses of the heart. If God be, He is good; 
if good, He loves us; if He love us, He must efficaciously 
cure our evils. He must come to us since we cannot go to 
Him. The Incarnation, the redemption, the sacraments, the 
unchangeable dogma, the indefectible hierarchy, become 
necessary, and all these are proved by the real existence and 


KE Y OF MODERN PHENOMENA 


379 


perpetual presence in the Church of an evidently divine 
power which changes the ignorant into sages, the weak into 
heroes, the simplest women, and even the poorest children, 
into veritable angels on earth. Woe to him who misunder¬ 
stands, shame to him who resists and denies this power, for it 
is the Spirit of Charity ! By the side of this reasonable faith, 
a fond and fanciful faith, anarchic as madness and capricious 
as dreams, has always endeavoured to establish itself—it is 
the faith of visionaries who take the phantoms of their 
imaginations to be divine revelations, of those who seek 
knowledge from ecstacy, intoxication, sleep, catalepsy, in fine, 
from all states which by suspending free-will in man, render 
him more or less insane. And they see not that alienation is 
forfeiture of manhood, that the spirit of vertigo is the spirit 
of lies and wickedness, and that by abandoning themselves 
to automatic trances, they leave the direction of their thought 
to the dark unknown, and become voluntarily deranged, which 
is horrible and wholly contrary to Nature. They develop 
thereupon into prophets of the vortex, seers of vertigo, oracles 
of the great chaos, interpreters of fatality. They gaze into a 
broken glass, and fancy they behold the multitude of celestial 
spirits which have already served as nourishment to their 
minds, while their doctrinal reveries resemble the night¬ 
mares of painful digestion. Where is the essential difference 
between our modern hypnotists and those ancient Indian 
gnostics who with eyes fixed on their navel awaited the 
manifestation of the uncreated light? Necromancy replacing 
Christianity, death-lights substituted for the speech of the 
living God, spectral fluid descending on us instead of grace, 
the eucharistic communion neglected for I know not what 
banquets where the soul is asphyxiated by breathing the 
phosphorus emanating from corpses—this, pitiable beings, is 
what you take for a religious renovation, this is your faith and 
your cultus, this the darksome God whom you adore! 

Read the Fathers of the first centuries; scan the great 
epochs of Christianity; listen to St Augustine aspiring 
towards the infinite, and St Jerome meditating on heaven, 
amidst the noise of the falling Roman Empire; hearken to 
the peal of the eloquence of Chrysostom and St Ambrose; 
then come down to the spiritualistic vagaries of Home, or 


38 ° 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


the pantheistic lucubrations of Allan Kardec, and you will 
smile in pity and disgust. Is death but a bitter deception ? 
Are the realities of the life beyond to be the derision of our 
aspirations in this ? Is the true paradise less radiant than 
Dante’s, and perdition less terrible than his hell ? What, 
do disembodied spirits, like those of Swedenborg, promenade 
with hats on their heads? Do they obsess the living to 
make them write puerilities ? Don’t you see that the hell of 
the Middle Ages with its grandiose terrors would be prefer¬ 
able to this ridiculous degradation of souls ? Let God 
torture me if there be a God who is capable of torturing me, 
but do not let Him make me a fool! 

Spiritism is a photography of current notions. The books 
of Allan Kardec swarm with Saint-Simonism, Sweden- 
borgianism, and Mormonism, but they are less learned than 
Saint-Simon, less elevated than Swedenborg, less logical 
than Joe Smith. Must we believe that we continue growing 
old after death, and that we reject on earth the dotage of 
the life beyond? What a sad prospect for great men! 
What a melancholy advantage for the living! 

Magical doctrine is not that of mediums. Dogmatizing 
mediums can only teach anarchy since their inspiration is 
the result of disorderly excitation. They are ever predicting 
disasters, ever denying hierarchic authority, ever posing as 
sovereign pontiffs. The initiate, on the contrary, respects 
the hierarchy above all, loves and preserves order, is 
deferential to sincere belief, rejoices at every sign of im¬ 
mortality in faith, and of redemption by charity, which wholly 
consists in discipline and obedience. 

The study of the strange phenomena which take place in 
the presence of men like Home is no less of the highest 
importance. It is a question of seriously recanting the too 
premature denials of the eighteenth century, of unfolding 
before science and reason less narrow horizons than those 
of a bourgeois criticism which denies everything it is unable 
to explain. Mr Home is a person afflicted with contagious 
somnambulism and contagious hallucination. The facts 
which take place in his presence prove that the forms of an 
over-excited imagination are as real as the impressions of 
photography. We cannot see that which has no existence; 


KEY OF MODERN PHENOMENA 


381 


the phantoms of dreams and the reveries of the waking state 
are real images existing in the Astral Light. But if the 
images attracted by diseased brains have any reality about 
them, can they not be really projected outside the brain or 
entire nervous organism of the medium, and thus influence 
the organism of those who voluntarily or otherwise enter 
into nervous sympathy with the medium ? 

And now let us answer those who see manifestations of 
the other world, and facts of necromancy in these pheno¬ 
mena. Our teaching on this point is that of the rabbins 
who compiled the Zohar. 


Axiom . 

The spirit clothes itself to come down, and strips itself to 
go up. 

Created spirits are clothed with bodies because they must 
be limited, in order that their existence may be possible. 
Denuded of all body, and consequently unlimited, created 
spirits would lose themselves in the infinite, and for want of 
the ability of self-concentration somewhere they would be 
dead and impotent everywhere, plunged, as they would be, 
in the immensity of God. All created spirits, therefore, have 
bodies, some more subtle, some grosser, according to their 
environment. The soul of a dead person cannot live in our 
atmosphere any more than we could exist in the earth or 
water. It dwells above the air, which is an earth for it , 1 as 
the Saviour declares in the Gospel—“ The great gulf is fixed, 
and those who are above can no longer go down to those 
below.” The hands which appear in the presence of Mr 
Home are, therefore, air coloured by the reflections which his 
diseased imagination attracts and projects. They may be 
touched as they are seen; they are part illusion, part nervous 
and magnetic force. Such phenomena of the Astral Light 
are always produced at critical epochs for humanity. They 
are phantoms of the world’s fever, the hysterics of an out- 
wearied society. In the days of the Caesars Rome was full of 
spectres; the doors of the Temple opened of themselves in 
Vespasian’s time, and the cry of “The gods depart!” was 

1 See Note 53. 


382 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


heard. Now, when the gods depart, the devils return; 
religious sentiment is transformed into superstition when 
faith is lost; for souls have need of faith, because they are 
athirst for hope. 

Sacred and beautiful kingdom of the sky, Jesus the Man- 
God, and Mary the Mother of God ! Angels of Fra Angelico, 
Saints of the Golden Legend, Virgins of the paradise of 
Dante, how far more sublime and poetic, how far more fair 
are ye than the ghosts of Cahagnet 1 or the wandering larvae 
of Allan Kardec! Severe and incorruptible dogma, which 
distributes the elect on the golden ladder of the hierarchy; 
profound teaching, full of light for docility of mind, and of 
darkness for pride; sun of glory and of justice, men see you 
not, because their eyes are blinded ! Let them return to 
reason, and they will return to faith, for faith and true reason 
are sisters, and both are God’s cherished daughters. Woe be 
to him who discerns them not, but threefold woe to him who 
would divide them! 


1 See Note 54. 


PART X 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


I.-—Faith. 

Faith is the firm adhesion of the soul to its reasonable and 
necessary hypotheses, and this faith may itself be called 
reason. The obstinate adherence of the mind to impossible 
and unreasonable hypotheses is superstition, fanaticism, folly. 

Faith is the confidence of the human soul in a higher 
reason than its own reason. It, therefore, exalts the intelli¬ 
gence of man instead of degrading it. The expanse of heaven 
begins where the peaks of the mountains finish. I cannot 
believe the reverse of what I know, and I cannot know the 
opposite of that which I believe, without at once renouncing 
either my faith or knowledge. The object of faith is, there¬ 
fore, necessarily hypothetical, but the object of rational faith 
is necessary hypothesis for science. Where science pauses 
faith begins, and it is defined by St Paul in the following 
terms : —Accedentem ad Deum oportet credere , quia est et inquir- 
entibus se remunerator sit . The things of science must not 
therefore be judged according to the processes of faith, nor 
the things of faith according to the methods of science. 

To enlarge the sphere of science is apparently to defraud 
faith, but it is in reality to extend its domain in proportion, 
for it widens its basis. Faith is superstition and madness if 
reason be not at its foundation. We must believe in causes 
which reason compels us to admit on the evidence of effects 
that are known and appreciated by science. The work of 
science is to detach faith from the letter and unite it to the 
spirit. In proportion as science grows faith is exalted. Any 
faith that does not illuminate and extend reason is a super- 



3 8 4 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


stition ; any dogma which denies the life of the understanding 
and the spontaneity of free-will is also a superstition. To 
believe is to acquiesce in what we do not now know, but 
which reason assures us beforehand that we shall know, or, 
at least, recognise, some day. Faith is the supplement to 
reason in the darkness which the latter leaves both before and 
behind her. It emanates from reason, but must not be con¬ 
founded with it. Its apparent opposition to reason is the 
strength of both, for it establishes their distinct and separate 
provinces, by fructifying the negative side of the one with the 
positive side of the other. What has caused all religious errors 
and confusions is the ignorance of the great law of the analogy 
of contrary things; we have sought to make religion a philo¬ 
sophy and philosophy a religion; we have endeavoured to 
subject the things which are of faith to the critical methods 
of science, which is quite as ridiculous as to subject science 
to the blind submissions of faith. To reason upon faith is to 
destroy faith, which has an object beyond reason. Faith is 
aspiration towards the infinite, and mystery is its necessary 
object; it is not the stupid credulity of astonished ignorance. 
It is the consciousness and confidence of love; it is the cry 
of reason, which persists in the denial of the absurd, even in 
the presence of the unknown. It is a sentiment as necessary 
to the soul as breathing is to life, it is the heart’s dignity, it is 
the reality of enthusiasm. It does not consist in the affirma¬ 
tion of this or that symbol, but in true and constant aspiration 
towards the truths which are veiled by all symbolisms. To 
deny a religion, or even all religions, rather than adhere to 
formulae which the conscience reproves, is a courageous and 
sublime act of faith. Every man who suffers for his con¬ 
victions is a martyr for faith. He may explain himself badly, 
but he prefers truth and justice before all else; do not let him 
be condemned without a hearing ! 

To believe in the supreme truth is not to define it, and to 
declare our belief in it is to admit the possibility of things 
beyond our knowledge. To define and circumscribe the 
object of faith is to formulate the unknown. Professions of 
belief are statements of human ignorance and aspiration, while 
scientific theorems are monuments of human conquests. 
Man can realise that which he believes in the measure of that 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


385 


which he knows, and in virtue of that which he does not 
know ; and he can accomplish all that he desires in the 
measure of that which he believes, and in virtue of that 
which he knows. Analogy is the final word of science and 
the first of faith; it is the sole possible mediator between the 
finite and the infinite, between the visible and invisible. 
Dogma is the ever-ascending hypothesis of a presumable 
equation. For the ignorant, it is the hypothesis which is the 
absolute affirmation, and the absolute affirmation which is 
hypothesis. Science has its necessary hypotheses, and he 
who seeks to realize them ennobles science without restraining 
faith, for on the other side of faith is infinity. 

Faith is greater than all religions, because it determines 
less than any of them the articles of belief. A definition of 
faith is, at most, the settlement of the terms of a common 
hypothesis, for it is impossible to divine the unknown except 
by the supposed and supposable proportions which it bears 
to the known, and thus analogy, the one and only dogma of 
the ancient Magi, has been and ever will be the begetter of 
all others. No specialized dogma constitutes more than a 
persuasion which belongs to a particular community, but faith 
is a sentiment common to humanity at large. The more we 
argue with a view to definition, the less we believe; an addi¬ 
tional dogma is an opinion which a sect appropriates to itself, 
and, in some sense, abstracts from universal faith. Let the 
sectarians cast and recast their dogmas; let the superstitious 
elaborate and formulate their superstitions, let the dead bury 
their dead, and believe in the inexpressible truth, in the 
Absolute which reason admits without understanding, which 
we perceive without knowing! Believe in the Supreme 
Reason! Believe in infinite love, and commiserate the 
stupidities of the schools and the barbarisms of false philo¬ 
sophy ! 

Moral equilibrium is the concurrence of science and faith, 
distinct in their forces, but joined in their action to provide 
the mind and heart of man with that rule which is reason. 
It no more belongs to a theologian to affirm a mathematical 
absurdity, or deny the demonstration of a theorem, than to a 
savant to cavil, in the name of science, for or against dogmatic 
mysteries. An article of faith is not a subject for dispute, it 


3 86 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


is believed or not believed in, but it is of faith precisely 
because it excludes the examination of science. When the 
Count Joseph de Maistre asserts that our present stupidity 
will one day be the cause of as much astonishment as the 
barbarism of the Middle Ages, he, doubtless, alludes to those 
so-called strong minds who are daily saying:—“ I will believe 
when the truth of dogma shall be scientifically proved to me.” 
That is to say, I will believe when nothing remains to believe 
in, when dogma, as such, shall have ceased to exist, having 
become a scientific theorem, or, in other words, I will not 
admit the infinite till it be explained, determined, circum¬ 
scribed, and defined for me, in a word, till it has been limited. 
I will believe in the infinite when I know there is no infinity, 
in the immensity of ocean when I have seen it sealed up in 
bottles. But, good folks, what has been clearly proved to 
you, you believe no longer, for you know it! 

Faith is a divination by intelligence and love, directed by 
the indices of nature and reason. It is, therefore, in the 
essence of the things which are of faith to be inaccessible to 
science, doubtful for philosophy, and indefinite for certitude. 
Faith is the hypothetical realization and conventional settle¬ 
ment of the final ends of hope. It is the adherence to the 
visible sign of things unseen. 

Sperandarum substantia rerum 

Argumentum non apparentium . 

Science is purely human, and faith cannot reasonably 
affirm itself to be divine unless it be immensely collective. 
It is this collectiveness which deserves for opinions the 
name of religion, that is, the moral bond which unites men 
to one another. An isolated belief does not deserve the 
name of faith, which signifies confidence. Scientific truth 
is proved by exact demonstrations, truth in religion by the 
unanimity of belief and the sanctity of works, which are the 
proof of faith. To defy all social authority, and only put 
trust in one’s self, is insanity. The Catholic believes in the 
Church because the Church represents for him the elite of 
believers. It is this which justifies the faith of the charcoal- 
burner, who not only should be a believer in matters of 
religion, but also in matters of science. Shall he deny or 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


387 


contest the genius of Newton because he cannot understand 
his theorems? * I am no expert in painting, but I submit 
willingly to the judgment of great artists, who, not being 
experts in exegesis, in theology, and in Kabbalah, would be 
unreasonable if they did not, in such matters, defer to the 
opinion of those who have made the transcendental sciences a 
special study. 

This, then, is the foundation of faith. It is the confidence 
of those who do not know in those who do; and as the 
formulation of beliefs should borrow from science the grounds 
of its hypotheses, and as it is necessary that science should 
at least admit the possibility of such hypotheses, it follows 
that in matters of belief, above all, authority is needful, and 
that this authority should be collective, hierarchic, and uni¬ 
versal; in other words, catholic. The central point of faith 
is thus the teaching of the Church; thence it radiates and 
advances in science, but circularly and in accordance with 
two forces analogous to those of the stars—the centripetal 
and centrifugal forces . 1 

II.— The True God. 

The idea of God is a psychological, real, universal, incon¬ 
testable fact. Logic or reason, the Logos of supreme power, 
is God. This reason, this universal logic, illuminates all 
rational souls. It is the great soul of all souls, the immov¬ 
able centre round which intelligences gravitate like star-dust. 
To believe that there does not exist an intelligent cause in 
being, is the most rash and absurd of creeds—a creed, because 
it is the negation of the indefinite and undefinable; rash, 
because it is isolating and desolating; absurd, because it 
supposes the most complete nothingness in place of the most 
complete perfection. To believe in the reason of God, 
and in the God of reason, is to render atheism impossible. 
Idolaters have made atheists. When Voltaire said that “if 
God did not exist he must be invented,” he felt rather than 

1 The substance of this passage is derived from Part VIII., pp. 347, 
348, to complete the author’s indications on the subject of philosophical 
faith. 


3 88 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


understood the necessity of God. Does the Deity exist in 
reality ? We do not know; we believe it, but have no 
certainty; if we were certain we should not believe, we. should 
know it. We hope and desire that He does exist, and this is 
the cause of our faith, which, thus formulated, is reasonable 
faith, for it admits the doubt of science; in fact, we only 
believe in what seems probable, but cannot be ascertained. 
To think otherwise is to rave, to speak otherwise is to talk 
like fanatics or illumines. 

God, in philosophy, cannot be more than a hypothesis, 
but it is a hypothesis imposed by good sense and reason, a 
hypothesis so necessary, that without it all theorems become 
absurd or doubtful. God is the absolute object of human 
faith. Is the Universal Being a blind machine which eter¬ 
nally evolves intelligences by chance, or itself a providential 
intelligence which directs forces for the amelioration of 
spirits? The first supposition is repugnant to reason, and, 
therefore, both reason and science should defer to the 
second. 

For the initiates of the Kabbalah, God is the absolute 
unity which creates and animates numbers, and for them 
the unity of human intelligence proves the unity of God. 
Mathematics cannot demonstrate blind fatality, since they 
are the expression of that exactitude which is the character 
of the most supreme reason. The man who denies God is 
as fanatical as he who defines Him with assumed infallibility, 
and the blasphemy is equal in both. Every definition of 
God is a recipe of religious empiricism, by means of which 
superstition will be sooner or later enabled to fabricate a 
devil. God is commonly defined by enumerating all that 
He is not, for He is necessarily the most unknown of all 
beings; He can only be defined in the inverse sense of 
our experiences, Fie is all that we are not, He is the infinite 
opposed to the finite by a contradictory hypothesis. Man 
realizes that he is made in the image of God when he has 
conceived the Deity by enlarging to infinity his conception 
of himself. Understanding God as man the infinite, man says 
to himself, I am God the finite. He makes God by analogy, 
working from less to greater. Absolute magical science 
bids us, nevertheless, and before all things, believe in God, 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


389 


and adore without seeking to define Him, for a God defined 
is in some sense a finite God. The less we define God, the 
more are we forced to believe in Him. God is that which we 
shall be eternally learning to know, and, consequently, that 
which we shall never know. The greatest of all mysteries 
is this existence of Him for whom alone there is no mystery. 
Containing the infinite, which is essentially incomprehen¬ 
sible, He is Himself the infinitely and eternally insoluble 
mystery; that is to say, He is in all appearance that pre¬ 
eminent absurdity in which Tertullian believed. Credo quia 
absurdum. Necessarily absurd, since reason must for ever 
renounce attaining it; necessarily credible, since science and 
reason, far from proving that it does not exist, are absolutely 
and necessarily forced to countenance the belief that it does, 
and to adore it themselves with closed eyes, for this absurdity 
is the infinite source of reason. 

God, nevertheless, cannot subsist without some supreme 
and inevitable reason, and it is this reason which is the 
absolute, it is in this that we should fix our faith, if we seek 
a substantial base for it. St Thomas has said :—“ A thing 
is not just because God wills it, but God wills it because it 
is just.” If he had logically deduced all the consequences 
of this beautiful thought, he would have found the philo¬ 
sophers’ stone, and instead of being only the Angel of the 
Schools, he would have been their reformer. 

From the idea which men conceive of God have always 
proceeded their notions of power, whether spiritual or 
temporal, and the word which expresses Divinity having 
been in all ages the formulation of the Absolute both in 
revelation and natural intuition, the meaning which is 
attached to this word has been invariably the dominant idea 
of every religion and philosophy, as of all politics and ethics. 
Divinity, one in its essence, has two essential conditions for 
the fundamental bases of its being—necessity and liberty. 
To conceive in God liberty without necessity is to imagine 
an omnipotence without rule or reason, it is to enthrone the 
ideal of tyranny in heaven. This was the most pernicious 
error which in the Middle Ages governed many mystical and 
enthusiastic minds. To conceive in God necessity without 
liberty, is to suppose an infinite machine, of which we are, 


39° 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


unfortunately for us, the intelligent wheels. To obey or 
be broken, such would be our eternal' doom, and we should 
be knowingly obeying something which would command 
without knowing why; unhappy wanderers should we be, 
shut up in waggons which a terrible locomotive carries at 
full steam on the road to the abyss. This pantheistic, 
materialistic, and fatalist doctrine is at once the absurdity 
and calamity of our century. But the laws of supreme 
reason necessitate and rule liberty in God, who is necessarily 
wise and reasonable. 

We have said that in the heaven of human conceptions it 
is humanity that creates God, and men think that God has 
made them in His likeness because they represent Him in 
theirs . 1 But let us now dare to affirm that there exists an 
immense fact, equally appreciable by faith and by science, a 
fact which renders God in a certain sense visible on earth, an 
incontestable fact, and one of immense significance; it is the 
manifestation in the world, from the epoch of the Christian 
revelation, of a spirit unknown to the ancients, a spirit evidently 
divine, more positive than science in its works, more magni¬ 
ficently ideal in its aspirations than the highest poetry, a spirit 
for which it has been necessary to create a new name, wholly 
unheard of in the sanctuaries of antiquity, a name which in 
religion, both for science and faith, is the expression of the 
absolute. This word is Charity, and the spirit which we 
speak of is called the spirit of charity, which is God in His 
earthly manifestation. Before charity, faith prostrates itself, 
and science bows down overcome, for it is*evidently something 
greater than humanity; it is stronger than all passions, it 
triumphs over suffering and death; it reveals Deity to every 
heart, and seems already to fill eternity by that realization of 
its legitimate hopes which it commences here below. By the 
spirit of charity Jesus, expiring on the Cross, triumphed over 
the anguish of the most frightful torments; by the spirit of 
charity twelve artfcans of Galilee conquered the world; it is 
by charity, in fine, that the folly of the Cross has become the 
wisdom of nations, because all noble hearts have felt it a more 
sublime and worthy thing to believe with those who love and 


1 See Note 55. 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


39i 


renounce themselves, than to doubt with the egotists and 
slaves of self-indulgence! 


III.— The God of Light and the God of Shadow. 

A God in their own likeness is a necessity for ordinary men. 
If their master be not angered when they do evil, they will 
believe in the impunity of evil, and there will be no longer 
any bridle on their unruly actions. If the master be not hard, 
severe, mysterious, difficult to understand and satisfy, they will 
fall into carelessness and idleness. The refractory child has 
need of rods, and the father must have the quality of feigning 
anger, even when disposed to smile at the rogueries of his 
offspring. Hence our ancient teachers tell us that the Divinity 
has two faces, one which grows wrathful regarding the crimes 
of men, the other which smiles in the contemplation of eternal 
justice. This mystery of transcendent initiation was known 
even to the Greeks, who sometimes depicted Pluto with the 
attributes of Jupiter, Egypt invoked the black Serapis, and 
there are images of Bacchus in which the two faces character- 
isteric of Janus are given to the god whose adventures recall 
the history of Moses, that god in whose festivals they cried, 
Io Evoke! (Jod he vau he), the four letters of the name of 
Jehovah. One of these faces is young and beautiful like that 
of Apollo, the other grotesque and grimacing, like that of 
Silenus. Apollo and Bacchus typify the two principles of 
human exaltation—enthusiasm and intoxication. Sublime 
souls are intoxicated by beautiful poetry; vulgar souls seek 
enthusiasm in the vertigo induced by wine. But wine is not 
the sole cause of intoxication in the vulgar. Men devoid of 
elevation are besotted by all fumes which have the power of 
ascending to the brain—insatiable desires, disorderly affections, 
vainglory, fanaticism. Some ascetic imaginations are more 
insane and unruly than the Bacchantes; there are pretended 
defenders of religion, who, converting sweetness into bitterness 
and preaching into a sneer, are condemned by incorruptible 
nature to wear the mask of a satyr. Their lips are seared by 
insolence as by a red-hot iron, and their crooked eyes advertise, 
despite themselves, the perversity of their heart. 


39 2 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


The shadow face described by the rabbins is not, however, 
the god of Garasse, Patouillet, and Veuillot, but the veiled 
Deity of Moses, the posterior God, if I may so allude to 
an allegorical episode in the Bible. Moses entreated God 
the invisible that he might be permitted to behold Him. 
Turn towards the opening in the rock, said the Lord, I will 
set my hand on that opening as I pass, and when I have 
gone by, thou shalt see my back parts. When Moses wrote 
this, the symbolism of the shadow head was present to his 
mind, of that head which men alone can contemplate without 
being blinded by light. The God of light is He who is 
dreamed by sages ; the God of darkness is the dream of 
the distracted. Human madness beholds all things back¬ 
wards, and if we may be permitted to employ here the bold 
metaphor of Moses, the face which the multitudes adore is 
but the back part of the divine fiction—it is the hinder 
shadow of God : Videbis posterior a mea. This shadow God 
is, however, neither the evil principle of the Manichaeans 
nor the Ahriman of the Persians; it is a more recondite 
conception, a mediating veil between the infinite light and 
the feeble eyes of man, it is a veil made in the likeness of 
the humanity wherewith God himself condescends to shroud 
his glory. The reason of all mysteries is found in this 
shadow, which explains the terrible God of the prophets, 
who threatens and inspires dread. It is the God of priests, 
the God who desires sacrifices, the God who slumbers often 
and is awakened by the trumpets of the Temple, the God 
who repents that He made man, who also, overcome by 
offerings and sacrifices, is appeased at the moment when he 
is about to punish. Here it should be observed that this 
obscure conception of divinity, far from seeming evil to the 
great rabbinical revealers of the mystery, was for them 
legitimate and necessary. The antique sanctuary was veiled, 
and when the veil was rent, that catastrophe announced 
the end of a religion and of a world. The veil is not rent 
without the earth quaking; this is what occurred at the 
death of Christ, but the sanctuary which is unveiled is a 
sanctuary which is profaned. Caligula soon set up his idols 
therein, while awaiting the torches launched by the soldiers 
of Titus. A voice cried: — The gods depart, whilst 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 393 

Christianity silently prepares another sanctuary and weaves 
another veil. 

The ordeals of Egyptian initiation took place in vast under¬ 
ground temples ; thence neophytes who gave way to fear 
never again returned, but the adept who came forth victorious 
received the key of all religious mysteries, and the first great 
revelation, given to him in a flying whisper, was contained in 
this formula : Osiris is a Black God. That is to say, the 
God adored by the profane is but the shadow of the true 
God. We attribute to Him the passions of man in order that 
he may be feared by men. For if we do not provide men 
with a master like unto themselves, the conception of divinity 
will so exceed their feeble intelligence that it will escape them 
completely, and they will fall into atheism. Man, when he 
does evil, becomes disordered, because he has broken the 
providential law of his felicity. He is therefore unhappy, 
discontented with himself, and is told that God is wroth with 
him, so as to explain the sentiment of his irritated conscience. 
He must then appease God by expiations, which, like the 
punishments inflicted on unreasonable and headstrong children 
will impress a horror of evil upon the memory. He must 
above all return into the path of goodness, and then, by the 
peace which he experiences, he feels that God has forgiven 
him. God, nevertheless, does not pardon because He is 
never wroth; but if you tell the ordinary man that the 
supreme judge is in the depth of his conscience, he will 
regard God as only a name, he will come easily to clash with 
conscience, attributing its scruples or remorse to educational 
prejudices. He will come also to have no other guide than 
the interest of his passions, which are the commandants of 
death. 

IV.— The True Christ. 

We know God only by the spirit of Jesus Christ, which is 
the spirit of charity manifested by his words and his works : 
herein is all revelation, divine like charity itself. Science 
questions miracles and criticises prophecies, but there is 
something stronger than science, and more marvellous than 
are miracles, and this is charity. The spirit of charity is 
God, it is the soul’s immortality, it is the hierarchy, it is 


394 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


obedience, it is the forgiveness of injuries, it is the simplicity 
and integrity of faith. This spirit of Jesus Christ is ever 
living on the earth, otherwise all would die, and wheresoever 
it is found, there God is present, there active, and there, in a 
sense, visible. The Christ-initiator of modern times appeared 
to create new kings and new priests by means of knowledge, 
and, above all, by charity. Man, being unable, as we have 
said, to conceive anything superior to his own nature, idealizes 
himself in order to conceive God. Christ, by His sublime 
thoughts and admirable virtues, has realized this ideal. It is, 
therefore, in Jesus Christ that we must study God, and, as 
the mediator is also the'prototype and model of humanity, it 
is in Him still that we must study man, considered exclusively 
from the spiritual point of view. The whole science of spirits 
is thus summed up in Jesus Christ. Angels and demons are 
purely hypothetical or legendary beings ; let them remain in 
the region of poetry, they cannot belong to science. Let us 
content ourselves with men, let us study Jesus Christ, and let 
us seek God! 

The Gospel is the Spirit of Jesus, and this Spirit is divine. 
That is our profession of faith, plainly formulated, on the 
divinity of Jesus Christ. “ My words are spirit and life,” said 
this sublime initiator, “and here the flesh profiteth nothing.” 
The Gospel is the history of His Spirit; it is not the chronicle 
of His flesh. Man according to the flesh, God according to 
the Spirit, He is dead and He is arisen. “ If you live by My 
Spirit,” He said to His apostles, “ your flesh shall be My 
flesh, and your blood My blood; ” and these pre-eminently 
spiritual things, materialized through the density of barbarous 
theologians, have provided us with bleeding hosts and anthro- 
pophagus communions. The time has come for us to 
confound no longer the spirit with the flesh. When the 
Spirit of Jesus Christ shall be understood, that spirit which 
the Church invokes and adores under the names of spirit of 
knowledge, spirit of understanding, spirit of power, spirit of 
initiative, or of counsel, and, consequently, spirit of liberty, 
we shall no longer seek oracles from sleep, from catalepsy, 
from somnambulism, or from table-turning. 

Logic or reason, the Logos of supreme power, is God. 
This reason, this universal logic enlightens all rational 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


395 


souls; it shines in the obscurities of doubt; it pierces, 
penetrates, and rends the darkness of ignorance, while the 
darkness cannot grasp or imprison it. This reason speaks 
by the mouth of sages, it is synthetized in a single man, 
who, for this cause, has been called the Logos made flesh, 
or the great incarnate reason. The miracles of this man 
were miracles of light. He taught men that true religion 
is philanthropy; he shewed them that it was not in one 
city, nor on one mountain, nor in the Temple, that God 
must be sought, but in spirit and in truth. His doctrines 
were simple, like his life. Love God, that is, spirit and 
truth, above all things, and thy neighbour as thyself; here, 
said He, is the whole law. 

In this manner He opened the eyes of the blind, caused 
the deaf to hear and the lame to walk. The wonders 
which He worked on minds have been recounted in the 
allegorical form so familiar to the Easterns. His speech 
became bread which multiplied itself, His moral force a 
foot which walked upon the waves, and a hand which 
stilled storms. These legends increased with the ever-grow¬ 
ing admiration of His disciples. They are charming stories, 
similar to those of the Thousand and One Nights, and it 
was worthy of the barbarous ages which we imagine have 
passed by, though they have not yet ended, to take these 
graceful fictions for gross and material realities, to debate 
anatomically the virginal motherhood of Mary, to institute 
in the hands of Jesus an invisible and miraculous bakery 
for the multiplication of loaves, and to see a globular and 
serous blood flowing from the white and pure hosts which 
protest against blood, and announce for ever the completion 
of sacrifice. 

The Gospel is the symbol and expression of the great 
aspirations of humanity which are as ancient as the world, 
and it is the ideal legend of the perfect man. The concep¬ 
tion of an incarnation or manifestation of God in man is 
found in all the dogmas of olden sanctuaries. That the 
Gospel is a symbolic book, the Apostles have not concealed 
from us. St John says:—“There are also many other 
things which Jesus did, which if they were written every 
one, the world itself, I think, would not contain the books 


39 6 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


that should be written.” Now, the field of history is limited, 
but that of allegory is immense, and if St John did not 
mean to indicate by these words the true scope of the 
Gospel, he would have uttered an absurdity. But when the 
Apostles were silent, the evidence spoke sufficiently. Is 
there any need, for example, to prove to reasonable people 
that the devil, that is, the fictitious personage who repre¬ 
sents evil, did not actually and bodily carry away Jesus 
to a mountain so high that He could behold from thence 
all the kingdoms of the world ? The Gospel is full of 
similar histories composed in harmony with the genius of 
the Hebrews, who always surrounded their secret doctrine 
with enigmas and images, and in harmony with the genius 
of Jesus Himself, who, according to the Evangelists, scarcely 
ever spoke without parables. 

Must it be said that under all these allegories the person 
of the historical Christ disappears and is destroyed? Must 
we think, with Dupuis and Volney, that the personal and 
human existence of Jesus is as doubtful as that of Osiris, 
as fabulous as that of the Indian Chrishna, who was also 
the son of a virgin? Can any one have the temerity to 
affirm it when Jesus Christ is still living in His works, still 
present in His spirit, which has already changed, and will 
certainly further transfigure, the whole face of the earth? 
The existence of Homer has been doubted, but of what 
Homer? Of the commentators, perhaps, but does this 
mean that the Iliad and the Odyssey have no existence ? 
Have these divine poems composed themselves ? And is 
it not far from these works, admirable as they undoubtedly 
are, to the living poem of Christianity, to that Iliad of 
martyrs, wherein gods combat and are overcome by women 
and children, to that Odyssey of the Church which after 
so many storms and persecutions arrives, a sublime mendi¬ 
cant, at the threshold of the palace of the Caesars, launches 
with victorious arm the javelins which transfix the hearts 
of her enemies, and takes her seat upon the throne of the 
world ? 

The spirit of Jesus exists far more certainly and far more 
evidently than the genius of Homer. But this spirit is one 
of abnegation and sacrifice, for which reason it is divine. 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


397 


The less a man seeks, the more does he find himself. The 
greater his self-abandonment is, the better he deserves the 
adoption of heaven. The more he forgets himself, the more 
will he be remembered. Such, in a few words, are the great 
secrets of the omnipotence of Christianity, and Jesus, who 
gave these precepts, has also set the example. The man has 
passed into the symbol, and it is thus that He has become 
God. The Gospel tells us that He led His disciples up to a 
high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them. His 
face shone like the sun, and His garments became white as 
snow, that is to say, the man was obliterated in the light of 
the new revelation, and tradition, completing the legend later 
on, says that Jesus, when ascending to Heaven, left nothing 
of Himself on earth but His Spirit spread abroad in all the 
Church, and the ineffaceable imprint of His feet on the 
summit of the mountain. 

The Gospel is Jesus transfigured ; it is the epic of His 
admirable intelligence, and the wonders of His ethics 
represented by the most affecting images. Not a word of 
this book must be expunged, not a letter added, for it is the 
divine testament of the man who has annihilated Himself 
for us. Therein let us seek lights for faith and not docu¬ 
ments for history, consoling beliefs and not scientific pro¬ 
babilities. When the ancient eastern sculptors represented 
their deities, they gave them hybrid and monstrous forms to 
make it known to all that the gods were not men. In the 
same way the Evangelists by sowing their narrative with 
facts materially impossible, or formally contradictory, have 
meant to convey to us that they were not writing a simple 
history, but a profound symbol, and that here, as in all 
sacred writings, the letter which kills is a veil of the spirit 
which alone vivifies. 

But this Gospel symbolism does not disprove, as we have 
said, the historical existence of Jesus. Rousseau declared 
that the inventor of such a history would be more astonish¬ 
ing than the hero. We fully endorse the sentiment. The 
Jesus who in His understanding and heart is sufficiently 
great to create this admirable legend, is superior to him 
whom the crowd foolishly adore, or still more foolishly deny ; 
He is truly the ever-living incarnation of the Word of Truth, 


39 8 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


and we hail Him Son of God in all the splendour and in all 
the fulness of the term. 

Alfred de Vigny has said that legend is frequently more 
true than history, because legend recounts not acts which 
are often incomplete and abortive, but the genius itself of 
great men and great nations. It is pre-eminently to the 
Gospel that this beautiful thought is applicable, for the 
Gospel is not merely the narration of what has been, it is 
the sublime revelation of what is and what always will be. 
Ever will the Saviour of the world be adored by the kings 
of intelligence, represented by the Magi; ever will He 
multiply the eucharistic bread, to nourish and comfort our 
souls; ever, when we invoke Him in the night and the 
tempest, will He come to us walking on the waters, ever will 
He stretch forth His hand and make us pass over the crests 
of the billows; ever will He cure our distempers and give 
back light to our eyes ; ever will He appear to His faithful 
luminous and transfigured upon Tabor, interpreting the law 
of Moses and moderating the zeal of Elias. 

When Jesus by the divine heroism of his death demon¬ 
strates the soul’s immortality before the face of the whole 
world, when, victorious over agony, he utters a triumphant cry, 
then gently bows his head, and expires, what need have I that 
the rocks should split and the graves open ? Let me rather 
ignore these marvels. My whole mind and my whole heart 
are not enough for the admiration of the just man’s last breath. 
Away with these spectres, I have no time to look at them ; I 
am absorbed by a sublime reality. At the same time, I do 
not seek, like certain writers, to explain the Gospel miracles 
by ridiculous suppositions, as, for example, to say that the 
sufferer Lazarus was in reality buried alive, and left by his 
sisters in the tomb for four days, so as to ensnare by this device 
the implicated or foolish vanity of some doubtful marvel maker. 
History or legend, the gospel narrative compels my venera¬ 
tion ; I recall the magnificent picture of the prophet Ezekiel 
standing amidst the dead bones. Thinkest thou, O prophet, 
that these skeletons can revive ? But, behold, at the word of 
man obeying the word of God, the Spirit of the Word breathes 
forth, and humanity is re-born. It is the same with Lazarus. 
Lazarus, the great human leper, the sick man of the entire 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


399 


earth, has been dead for four days, that is to say, for four thou¬ 
sand years, since, as Scripture elsewhere tells us, a thousand 
years are, with God, as a single day. It is already in putrefac¬ 
tion, this human nature governed by the Emperor of Caprea. 
Saviour of the world, Thou hast come too late. Hadst thou 
been present Lazarus would not have perished. Jesus answers 
nothing, but He weeps, and the people whisper : See how he 
loved him! Then He commands that the stone should be 
rolled away; He calls back the dead to life, and he that was 
dead rises, still wrapped in his shroud. Such are the 
beginnings of Christianity. Unbind him, says the Saviour, 
and let him go free; there is its fulfilment and its end. This 
is not the history of a man ; it is the complement and inter¬ 
pretation of Ezekiel’s vision. We breathe the fulness of 
the breath divine in this narrative. We weep with Jesus, we 
tremble and start up with Lazarus; we raise our captive hands 
towards heaven. Lazarus—such are the slaves of America, 
such are the oppressed of Ireland, such the martyrs of Poland. 
Say, O say, Saviour, that they shall be unbound and go free ! 

Why should I seek anything else in this page which so 
profoundly impresses me ? I feel that it is true : I yield to the 
emotion which it inspires. But is it simply a parable, or is it 
the account of an event? As to this I know nothing, and 
should be rash if I affirmed anything contrary to the instruc¬ 
tion of the Church herein. The tradition of the fathers is 
with me; they understood the symbol as I understand it and 
were far from denying the history which served as a foundation 
for the symbol. 

The miracles of the Eternal are eternal. To admit the 
symbolism of the Gospel miracles is to intensify their light, is 
to proclaim their universality and perpetuity. No, these 
things have by no means passed away, as it is said, they 
endure eternally. The things which pass away are accidents 
that pass, the things which divine genius reveals by symbolism 
are immutable truths. 1 


1 See Note 56. 


400 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


V.—Mysteries of the Logos. 

That intelligent power which acts in the universal move¬ 
ment of things we denominate the Word or Logos in a 
transcendental and absolute manner. It is the initiative of 
God which can never be ineffectual and can never be arrested 
before it has attained its end. With God, to speak is to 
create, and even among men such should be the purport of 
speech, for true speech is the seed of actions. A projection 
of intelligence and will can never be barren unless it be an 
abuse or profanation of its original dignity. This is why the 
Saviour of men demands a severe reckoning not only for all 
errant thoughts and thoughts without a legitimate object, but 
also for idle words, that is, words which have no correspond¬ 
ing action or consequence. A pleasantry, a drollery which 
causes diversion and laughter is not an idle word. 

Jesus, says the Gospel, was powerful in works and in 
words—the works before the speech—thus he established and 
proved His right to teach. Jesus began to act and to speak, 
says another evangelist, and frequently in the primitive lan¬ 
guage of Holy Scripture an action is called verbum. More¬ 
over, in every tongue that which expresses both being and 
doing is called the verb, and there is no verb which cannot 
be supplemented by the verb to act through a change in 
construction. “ In the beginning was the Word,” says St 
John. In what beginning? In the first, the absolute prin- 
cipium which is before all else—in this beginning—was the 
Word, that is, action. This is philosophically incontestable, 
since the first principle, origin, or cause, all which terms are 
also included in the scope of the word principal, is necessarily 
the first mover. The Logos is not an abstraction, it is the 
most positive principle in the world, since it proves itself 
incessantly in deeds. Speech may occasionally be sterile, 
as in the harvest we find some empty ears of corn, but the 
Logos is never unfruitful—it is full and productive speech, 
which its hearers accomplish always, though often without 
understanding, and seldom without having resisted it. Doc¬ 
trines most talked of are not those which succeed most. 
Christianity was a mystery still when the Caesars were con¬ 
scious of being ousted by the Christian Logos. A system 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


401 


admired by the world and applauded by the crowd can never 
be more than a brilliant assemblage of barren verbosity; a 
system to which humanity, so to speak, submits in spite of 
itself is a Logos. 

When a will modifies the world, there is a Logos speaking. 

The Word manifested by life is realization or incarnation. 
The life of the Word accomplishing its cyclic movement is 
adaptation or redemption. Do you wish to know the true 
religion ? Seek that which realizes most in the divine order, 
that which humanizes God and deifies man, which incarnates 
the Logos by making Deity visible and tangible to the most 
ignorant, that, finally, having a doctrine suitable to all and 
capable of being adapted to all; the religion which is hier¬ 
archic and cyclical, which has allegories and images for 
children, a sublime philosophy for grown men, and high 
hopes and sweet consolations for the old. The Word is the 
reason of belief, and therein also is the expression of that 
faith which verifies science. 

In the human order, things are as our interior Logos makes 
them. To believe one’s self happy is to be happy; what we 
esteem grows precious in the ratio of our esteem, and it is 
thus that magic may be said to change the nature of things. 
The Word creates forms, which react in their turn on the 
Word to- modify and complete it. Every utterance of truth 
is the beginning of an act of justice. The question is some¬ 
times asked whether man may not occasionally be driven into 
evil. Yes, when his judgment is false and his Logos conse¬ 
quently unjust, but we are as responsible for a false judgment 
as we are for a bad action. What falsifies judgment is the 
unjust vanity of egotism. The unjust word, not able to realize 
itself by creation, is realized by destruction. It must destroy 
or die. If it rested inactive, it would be the greatest of dis¬ 
orders, a permanent blasphemy against truth. 

The beauty of speech is a radiation of truth; a true utter¬ 
ance is always beautiful, and a beautiful utterance is invariably 
true. This is the reason that artistic works are always holy 
when they are beautiful. What does it signify to me if 
Anacreon celebrate Bathyllus, provided that I listen in his 
verses to that divine harmony which is the eternal hymn of 
beauty ? Poetry is pure like the sun; it spreads its veil of 

2 C 


402 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


light over the errors of humanity. Woe to him who would 
strip off that veil to investigate deformities! A statue of 
Nero or Heliogabalus executed like the masterpieces of 
Phidias would be an absolutely beautiful and absolutely good 
work. Scandalous statues are statues ill-executed, and bad 
books are books ill-conceived or ill-written. 

Every Logos of beauty is a word of truth, a light formulated 
in speech, for light is the instrument of the Word, the shining 
caligraphy of God on the great book of the night. But in 
order that the most brilliant splendour may be produced and 
become visible, it requires a shadow; and in order to the 
efficacy of creative speech, it has need of contradiction, it 
must experience denial, derision, and—what is more cruel 
than either—indifference and oblivion. The grain which is 
sown in the earth must die before it can germinate. The 
Logos which affirms and the voice which denies must inter¬ 
marry, and then practical truth and real progressive speech 
will issue from their union. Therefore, never let contradiction 
discourage men of enterprise. A plough is required for the 
earth, but the earth resists because it is in labour; it defends 
itself, like all virgins; it conceives and brings forth slowly, 
like all mothers. Ye, therefore, who seek to sow a new plant 
in the field of intelligence, understand and respect the bashful 
resistance of limited experience and reluctant reason. When 
a new Logos comes into the world it needs bonds and 
swaddling-clothes; genius has brought it forth, but experience 
must nourish it. Fear not when it is unbound and apparently 
perishes; oblivion for it is a healthful repose, and contra¬ 
dictions are its cultivation. When a sun evolves in infinity, 
it creates or attracts planets; a single spark of developed light 
is the promise of a universe to space. 

All magic is in a word, and this word, Kabbalistically 
pronounced, is stronger than the powers of heaven, earth, 
and hell. Nature is commanded with the name of Jod he 
vau he ; the kingdoms are conquered in the name of Adonai, 
and the occult forces which comprise the empire of Hermes 
are all obedient to him who can pronounce, according to 
science, the incommunicable name of Agla. To pronounce 
these great names of the Kabbalah according to science, we 
must do so with full understanding, with a will unchecked by 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


4°3 


anything, with an activity which nothing can rebuff. In 
magic, to have said is to have done; the word begins with 
letters and ends with acts. We do not will anything really 
except when we will it with our whole hearts—even to the 
point of destroying our most cherished affections for the sake 
of it—and with all our strength—even to staking health, 
fortune, and life thereon. It is by absolute self-devotion that 
faith is constituted and proved. But the man who is armed 
with such a faith will move mountains. 

Plato was the first to proclaim the divinity of the Word, 
that is, of speech, and he seems to have foreseen the near 
incarnation of this Logos on earth (for Jesus is the Word in¬ 
carnate) ; he announces the passion and death of the perfect 
just man, condemned by the iniquity of the world. But this 
sublime philosophy of the Logos was not his invention, it 
belongs to the pure Kabbalah, and Plato derived it therefrom. 
The Word manifests by the creative action which produces 
form, it is clothed with human form, and flesh, thus become 
the vestment of the Word, is the Word itself when it is the 
exact expression thereof. So does the Word become flesh. 
The perfect Word is the divine unity expressed in human 
life. The true man is our Saviour, that head of whom the 
faithful are all members. Humanity, constituted on a 
hierarchic and progressive scale, has for its chief He who is 
God, because He is at the same time the best of men, He 
who died in order that He might live afresh in all. All we 
therefore are one body, whose soul should be Jesus Christ, 
our prototype and our model, the Word made flesh, and the 
Man-God. 


VI.— The True Religion. 

We are on the eve of a religious transformation, as Count 
Joseph de Maistre has said and as the whole world feels. 
Science and faith, with no uncertain voice, alike instruct us 
upon the nature of this transformation; it will be the passage 
from analysis to synthesis, from Christianity to Messianism, 
from blind to enlightened Catholicism. It will include the 
reconciliation of Jewish reason with Christian belief; the recur¬ 
rence to Kabbalistic studies will prepare the event, long ago 


404 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


predicted by the apostles and expected generally by all the 
fathers of the Church. The most enlightened among the 
Jews, those who have studied and understand the Zohar, 
anticipate such a reconciliation, and the keenest intellects of 
our time have foreseen such a synthesis. 

Religion exists in humanity as in love, and it is one like 
love. Like that also, it exists or does not exist in such or 
such soul, but, received or denied, it is in humanity; it is, 
therefore, in life, it is in nature, it is incontestable before 
science and even before reason. The true religion is that 
which has always existed, which does, and ever will exist. 
It alone can be called one, infallible, indefectible, and truly 
catholic, that is, universal. There is but one God, one sub¬ 
stance, one universe, one law, one life, and so also there is 
but one religion and one Church. Religion consists of four 
things which are fundamentally a single thing:—the infinite 
object of faith; faith, infinite like its object;‘the cultus by 
which faith becomes fertile; the people, believing and doing. 
The Church is the outward form of religion; religion creates 
the Church by exhibiting itself outwardly ; the Church creates 
religion by rendering it manifest. The Church is differentiated 
by four indissoluble things; a head which is ever the same 
and is consequently mysterious and divine; an invariable 
symbol; a perpetual sacrifice; an infallible school of teaching. 
The Church, like ourselves, possesses an incorruptible spirit and 
a decaying body, but the spirit thereof renews the body when 
it decays. The present disease of which the visible body of 
the Roman Church is dying is spiritual anarchy. Yet if my 
mother become leprous or infirm, she is not less my mother. 
The dogma of the universal Church has its luminous and its 
dark side ; the letter killeth, and the spirit giveth life. Many 
Catholics according to the letter are stupid idolaters; but we 
should attach ourselves to Catholicity according to the spirit. 
Our present clergy are mostly plunged in the darkness of the 
letter, and thus the hierarchy is upside down. Must one, 
therefore, separate from their communion? No, for they are 
the guardians of the letter which is the guardian of the spirit. 
They are seated in the seat of St Peter, as were the Pharisees 
in the seat of Moses; one can share in their forms but should 
beware of the leaven which they combine with them. An in- 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


405 


telligent Catholic ought to remain in the Church, wise amidst 
the ignorant, free amidst slaves, to enlighten and to liberate. 

Now, faith is an assurance imparted by community of belief, 
and true religion is therefore constituted by universal suffrage. 
Thus it is essentially and always Catholic. The true religion, 
of which all others have been successively the veils and 
shadows, superstitions imitated or borrowed, and false reflec¬ 
tions, is that which proves the actual by the actual, truth by 
reason, reason by evidence and common-sense. It is that 
which demonstrates by realities the cogency of hypotheses, and 
forbids reasoning on hypotheses independently and outside of 
realities. It is that, the basis of which is the dogma of 
universal analogies, though it never confounds the things of 
knowledge with those of faith. It can never be de fide that 
two and one make more or less than three, that, in physics, 
that which is contained is greater than that which contains it, 
that a solid body, as such, can act like a fluid or a gaseous 
body—that a human being, for example, can pass through a 
closed door without dematerialization or opening. To assert 
such a thing is to speak like a child or a madman; but it is no 
less insane to define the unknown and to reason from hypo¬ 
theses to hypotheses up to the a priori denial of evidence for 
the affirmation of precipitate suppositions. The wise man 
affirms what he knows, and does not believe in that of which 
he is ignorant, except in conformity with the reasonable and 
known necessities of hypotheses. 

But such a rational religion cannot be that of the multitude, 
for which fables, mysteries, definite hopes, and fears materially 
induced, are necessary. It is for this reason that the priest¬ 
hood has been established in the world. But the Church has 
two ministries—ecclesiastical and prophetic—the tiara of 
Aaron and the rod of Moses. Aaron did not cease to be 
sovereign pontiff even when he set up the golden calf and 
caused it to be adored. The official priesthood has always 
persecuted the priesthood of the spirit, which none the less 
remains outwardly submissive to the official priesthood, never 
setting up altar against altar, which is an abomination before 
God. 

The religion of the Kabbalists is the religion of religions. 
It is at once wholly hypotheses and wholly certitude, for it 


406 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


proceeds from the known to the unknown by analogy. The 
Kabbalist recognizes religion as a need of humanity, and his 
prayer can be united with that of all men to direct it by illustra¬ 
tions from science and reason, and to lead it to orthodoxy. 
If Mary be spoken of, he will reverence that realization of all 
that is divine in the dreams of innocence, and all that is ador¬ 
able in the holy folly of every mother’s heart. It is not he 
who will refuse flowers to decorate the altars of the mother of 
God, or white banners for her chapels, or even tears for her 
ingenuous legends ! It is not he who will deride the new-born 
God weeping in the manger, or the bruised victim of Calvary; 
he repeats, nevertheless, from the bottom of his heart, with 
the sages of Israel and the faithful believers of Islam, “ There 
is no God but God! ” which means for an initiate of the true 
science, “ There is but one Being, and that is Being ! ” But 
all that is expedient and touching in beliefs, but the splendour 
of rituals, the pomp of divine creations, the grace of prayers, 
the magic of heavenly hopes—are not these the lustre of moral 
life in all its youth and beauty ? If anything could alienate 
the true initiate from public prayers and temples, if anything 
could raise his disgust or indignation against all religious forms 
whatsoever, it is the manifested incredulity of priests or people, 
want of dignity in the ceremonies of the cultus, the profana¬ 
tion, in a word, of holy things. God is really present when 
recollected souls and feeling hearts adore Him; He is sensibly 
and terribly absent when spoken of without light or enthusiasm, 
that is, without intelligence or love. 

Now, so far as sentiments are concerned, association 
multiplies these by the reunion of those who share them, 
so that all are electrified by the enthusiasm of all, and ideas 
produce forms, while forms in their turn reflect and repro¬ 
duce ideas. These great laws of nature, observed by the 
ancient Magi, made them see the necessity of a public 
worship, single, obligatory, hierarchic, and symbolic, like 
religion in its entirety; splendid as truth, rich and varied as 
nature, starry as the sky, full of fragrance like earth; of 
that cultus, in a word, which was later on established by 
Moses, realized in all its glory by Solomon, and once more 
transfigured abides at this day in the great metropolis of 
St Peter at Rome. Humanity has really never possessed 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


407 


but one religion and one worship. This universal light 
has had its uncertain reflections and its shadows, but ever 
after the night of error we behold it reappear one and pure 
like the sun. 

The Catholic Church is organized humanity, the disciplined 
army of progress, preceded and followed by its scouts and 
laggards. It has its grades, and its discipline which is of 
obligation with all. The most powerful intelligence there 
manifests by the greatest docility. Nothing is there more 
clear-sighted than blind obedience, nothing more worthy 
of liberty than the sacrifice of liberty itself. A soldier who 
can obey no longer can live no longer, and when his leader 
exacts that which his conscience -condemns, he does not 
desert, he dies. The exalted but just sentiment which 
creates obedience to the flag is termed honour; the exalted 
but just sentiment which creates obedience to the Church 
is named faith. The egotistic dream opposed to faith is 
heresy; it is the soldier who would be victorious in isolation, 
the eccentric believer who would monopolize for himself alone 
the advantages of society, the man who would communicate 
with God without intermediary and make a revelation for 
himself alone. As if the God of humanity could be excom¬ 
municated, as if the base of religion were not the spirit of 
charity, and as if the spirit of charity existed except in the 
association of sacrifices and hierarchic concourse for the crea¬ 
tion and the social and ecclesiastic preservation of faith! 
The hierarchy is the guardian of doctrine, and wills that 
letter and spirit should be both respected. Catholic doc¬ 
trine deserves its beautiful name because it sums up all the 
religious aspirations of the world. Before reason and science 
it is therefore the most perfect doctrine, and the most 
complete which has yet appeared in the world. All is 
beautiful in our religion when it is understood rightly; all 
is true in our religion ; and I would even dare to add that 
every religion is true, apart from omissions, transpositions, 
wrong meanings, rash conjectures, and so forth. All is true 
in the books of Hermes, but in the attempt to conceal them 
from the profane they have to some extent become useless 
for the world, and from rendering truth impenetrable except 
for priests and kings, idolatry, despotism, and attacks on the 


408 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


priesthood have resulted. All is true in the doctrine of 
Moses; what is false is the exclusiveness and despotism of 
certain rabbins, the claim that the Jewish people are the 
elect of God and all other nations accursed. All is true in 
the doctrine of Christianity, but the Catholic priests have 
fallen into the same errors as the rabbins. Yet these three 
doctrines complete and explain one another, and their 
synthesis will be the religion of the future. 

The magnificence of the cultus is the life of religion, and 
if Christ chose poor ministers, His sovereign divinity did 
not wish for poor altars. Protestants have failed to under¬ 
stand that the ritual is an instruction, and that a sordid or 
despicable god must not be created in the imagination of 
the multitude. The English, who lavish so much wealth 
on their own dwelling-places, and affect to prize the Bible 
so highly, if they remembered the unparalleled pomp of 
Solomon’s Temple, would find their own churches exceed¬ 
ingly cold and bare. But what withers their cultus is the 
dryness of their own hearts; and with a cultus devoid of 
magic, dazzlement, and pathos, how can their hearts be ever 
informed with life ? 

Forms of worship are essentially magical. They operate of 
themselves the religious work, that is, the creative exaltation 
of the intuitions of faith and visions, whether celestial or in¬ 
fernal. According to their greater or lesser morality, they are 
a medicine or a poison to the mind. Religions devoid of cere¬ 
monies are cold and inefficacious. Protestantism can, therefore, 
produce only a rare and isolated enthusiasm, being a negation 
rather than a religious affirmation. It possesses neither the 
key of prophecies, nor the source of inspirations, nor the rod 
of miracles. It is incapable of creating God, and will, there¬ 
fore, never make great saints, which shews how much those 
people deceive themselves who imagine rational religions, 
religions devoid of mysteries, mythology, and sacrifices. 
Mythologies are the fantastic realizations of the religious 
dogma; superstitions are the sorcery of mistaken piety; but 
even mythologies and superstitions are more efficacious to the 
human will than a purely speculative philosophy, exclusive of 
all exterior observances. 

Religion is the magical creation of a fantastic world made 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


409 


sensible by faith. It is the apparent realization of ultra- 
rational hypotheses ; it is the satisfaction of a craving common 
to women, children, and all who resemble them. If the 
Catholic religion be sick of any complaint, it is of having 
made too many concessions to the reason of the eighteenth 
century, and it survives only by the remnant of its intolerance. 
Those who seek to humanize it seek to destroy it, and of this 
it is fully aware. Should another religion succeed it, it will 
be inevitably a more unreasonable and, by consequence, a 
stronger religion, as such. The religious affirmation is the 
antithesis of the reasonable affirmation, and philosophical 
harmony results from the analogy of these two contrary things. 
The Christian who looks on heaven as his true country, 
walks, morally speaking, with his feet upward and his head 
downward, and it is thus that heaven becomes a reflection of 
earth. The union of religion and philosophy must be accom¬ 
plished by the very fact of their distinction, which permits 
an alliance between them, as between the two triangles of 
Solomon’s star, as between the sword and sheath, as between 
the plenum and the void. For this reason the spiritual must 
be the negative of the temporal, and the royalty of wealth will 
be always the downfall of sacerdotal power, by destroying the 
marvellous character of its mission, and exciting the distrust 
and jealousy of material instincts. For this reason also the 
temporal power covers itself with ridicule when it interferes 
with the spiritual, as it will be always suspected of an interested 
motive. A master is invariably derided who says—“God 
wills you to obey me.” But let a man, truly independent of 
Caesar, say to the world—“ Obey Caesar ! ” and this man will 
be believed, above all if it be evident that he receives nothing 
from Caesar. For the same reason priests cannot marry and 
remain priests. No one is a prophet in his own home, and 
jealous wives would demand from their husbands an account 
of their neighbours’ confessions. The ancient Magi were 
celibates ; Pythagoras and Apollonius abstained from women ; 
Paganism itself had its vestals. The abnormal and, in one 
sense, irrational character of the celibate makes him essentially 
religious ; the world is aware of this, for while it inveighs 
against the celibacy of the priesthood, it despises wedded 
priests. 


4io 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Singular fact! Religion is the most human of all institu¬ 
tions, and philosophy is that which is truly divine in the 
intellectual life of humanity. Religion is the synthesis of the 
passions—desire of an infinite good, ambition driven to the 
delirium of a deific aspiration, despair of a surfeited or un¬ 
quenchable enjoyment which takes refuge in ecstasy, above 
all, pride—overweening pride—which thinks to humble itself 
before God, which accuses itself of offending God and 
disturbing the harmony of the spheres ! Philosophy, on the 
contrary, bold in its doubt, modest in its assurance, believes 
only in experience, and will owe nothing except to industry. 
But, as we have already suggested, religion alone and 
philosophy alone are both erroneous. At the bottom of the 
one are ascetical suicide and all the errors of fanaticism, at the 
bottom of the other the despair of scepticism and the corrup¬ 
tion of absolute indifference. Religion and philosophy, like 
the Eros and Anteros of old mythology, are made to support 
each other mutually by struggling continually together. The 
success of Voltaire was necessary to stimulate the pride of 
Chateaubriand, and without the “ Bible Explained ” we should 
never have admired the “Genius of Christianity.” 

Motion is life, and the law of motion always drives opinion 
towards extremes, but a proverb says that extremes meet, and 
the exaggerations of the Comte de Maistre differ little from 
those of Marat. We are still divided between them, and 
Fenelon, Vincent of Paul, and Volney are confounded between 
the two camps in the same estimation and indifference. Men 
too good and too strong are out of the combat. Truth is set 
up for competition, but all who attain it are doomed to silence, 
otherwise the chase would be at an end. “ For this,” said 
Christ, “ I speak in parables, that seeing they may not see, 
and hearing they may not understand; otherwise they would 
be converted and saved.” 

It is not necessary then that all should be converted, or, to 
better render it, should turn at the same time from their own 
way. It is not necessary then that all should be saved, that 
is, placed by initiation outside the strife of contrary forces. 
All are called, notwithstanding, but the elect are ever in a 
minority, that is, the conditions of initiation are such that 
they can only be fulfilled by a few competitors out of an 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


411 


immense concourse renewing from age to age and continuing 
till the election and salvation of all. 

Neither religion nor philosophy alone make initiates, but 
the alliance of the two lights united in one only. Then the 
initiates create at their will both philosophy and religion for 
the crowd. Fables on one side, rash speculations on the 
other, between them the science of faith and the faith of 
science, which embrace and join to govern the world. 
Religion is feminine, and it rules by poetry and love. 
Scientific progress is male, and it should govern and defend 
the woman, when needed, by energy and reason. Those 
who place themselves at Voltaire’s extreme and uncom¬ 
promising standpoint to judge religion must be astonished and 
indignant to find it still upheld and dominant. In their eyes, 
as a fact, it is only a degrading series of interested falsehoods 
and imbecile practices, but they judge it as badly as Blessed 
Margaret Mary Alacoque would judge, if she were still living, 
the things of progress, science, and liberty. We must always 
take actualities into account. 

Let the rigid puritanism of a celibate philosophy refuse 
to understand that fables may be told to children, or amiable 
little falsehoods to soothe them ; let it be indignant with 
nurses and mothers, but Nature will not heed the wrath of the 
philosopher; a wise man, however, while giving full play to 
the feminine priesthood, will watch over the choice of fables, 
will oppose himself to hideous fictions, will deny the existence 
of the were-wolf and of Croquemetaine, and thus will prevent 
the dawning reason of the child from being enfeebled. 

To deceive the people in order to get the better of them, 
to enslave them and retard their progress, to prevent it even 
if possible, such is the crime of black magic; to create dark¬ 
ness in order to increase fear, to redouble the obscurity of 
mysteries, to exact a blind obedience, is the black magic of 
religions, is the secret of ambitious sacerdotalism, which would 
substitute the priest for divinity, the temple for religion 
itself, and observances for virtues. This was the crime of 
the Magi who all perished in a fatal reaction; it was the crime 
of the Jewish priests, against whom Jesus protested, until 
they crucified Jesus. 

But to instruct the people progressively by the allegories 


412 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


of dogma and the poetry of mysteries, to ennoble their souls 
by the grandeur of hope, to win them to wisdom by sublime 
and ingenious extravagances, is the sacerdotal art in all its 
purity, is the magic of light, is the Kabbalistic secret of 
true religion. To avail one’s self of blind forces, and to 
direct them for the construction of the lever of intelligence, 
is the Great Secret of Magic. To appeal to passions which 
are the most blind and illimitable in their play, and to 
subject them to slavish obedience, is to create omnipotence. 
To place the mind under the dominion of dream, to extend 
cupidity and fear to infinity, by promises and threats which 
are thought supernatural, because they are against Nature, 
to make an army out of the multitude of weak heads and 
effeminate hearts turned generous through interest or fear, 
and with this army to achieve the conquest of the world— 
such is the great sacerdotal dream, and all the secret policy 
of the pontiffs of black magic. On the contrary, to enlighten 
the ignorant, to set wills free, to make truth and justice 
accessible to all, to impose on faith only those hypotheses 
which are necessary to reason, and thus direct all people to 
a single, simple, consoling and civilizing doctrine, such is 
divine reality, and it is this which has been published to the 
world by the Gospel. 

But a great misfortune befell Christianity. The betrayal 
of the mysteries by the false Gnostics—for the Gnostics, 
that is, those ivho knew, were the initiates of primitive 
Christianity—caused the Gnosis to be rejected, and alienated 
the Church from the supreme truths of the Kabbalah, which 
contain all the secrets of transcendental theology. Thus the 
people chose the ignorant for their leaders, equality in the 
sight of faith was proclaimed, the blind became leaders of 
the blind, and great obscurations resulted, great lapses and 
lamentable scandals, all which does not, however, prevent the 
doctrine itself from being sacred, or the sacraments from 
being efficacious. The virtues of the inferior grades being 
almost impossible in the higher, the chiefs of the priesthood 
found themselves deficient in the knowledge and the virtues 
necessary for their elevated dignity. They, therefore, con¬ 
stituted themselves into a caste, to support each other in 
common, and attempted to re-establish the old tests, without, 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


4 i 3 


however, progressive initiation; so that to subjugate per¬ 
manently the will of the neophyte, clerical education warps 
the heart and paralyzes the intellect. Thence come all 
religious abuses, and by consequence those of society. This 
is why the eloquence of preachers is so cold and inefficacious. 
How can they cause a law to be loved which they bear 
themselves like a yoke from their childhood ? How can 
they appeal to hearts whose hearts are sentenced to an 
eternal silence? The existing priesthood, moreover, makes 
despairing attempts to maintain the dogmas exposed by the 
eighteenth century in their previous 'position. But the veil of 
Isis cannot be mended, and divinities in patched garments do 
not inspire confidence. What is needed is a new veil, and 
popular poetry is already at work on one, for the world is 
never long without a religion. 

The Gnostics, however, were rightly condemned by the 
Church for divulging the secret doctrines and profaning the 
mysteries of the Master. Their principles issued from the 
Kabbalah misunderstood, and they borrowed from the false 
Kabbalah of India many dreams which by turns were horrifying 
and obscene. The Church, therefore, forbade the faithful the 
study of Kabbalistic science, the keys of which should be 
reserved by the supreme priesthood for itself alone. The 
false Gnostics thus caused magic to be condemned, but the 
true science of the Magi is essentially Catholic, because it 
grounds its entire realization on the principle of the hierarchy. 
Now, in the Catholic Church alone is there a serious and 
absolute hierarchy, and to this we should, return as to the sole 
principle of unity. For this reason, the true adepts have 
always professed the most profound respect and absolute 
obedience towards this Church. Henry Khunrath alone 
was a determined Protestant, but herein he was a German 
of his period rather than a mystic citizen of the eternal 
kingdom. 

In revealing for the first time to the world the mysteries of 
magic, we have no wish to revive practices buried beneath the 
ruins of ancient civilizations, but we proclaim to the humanity 
of to-day that it also is called to its omnipotent and immortal 
self-creation by its own works. God has created humanity, 
but each individual of the race is called to his own self- 


414 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


creation as a moral and consequently immortal being. For 
ourselves, with all our admiration for the Kabbalah and its 
secret doctrines which are so full of consolation and hope, 
we do not think that a new Church can make them the sub¬ 
ject of a novel teaching. They belong essentially to occult 
philosophy, and become condemnable immediately they are 
divulged. 

If we detest with all our heart the crass Pharisaism which 
has accumulated with the centuries over the pure gold of the 
sanctuary, we are none the less an avowed partisan of ortho¬ 
doxy, of authority, and hierarchy; and if our Messianic 
mission were nothing but a new sectarian departure, if it were 
not the very foundation of Judaistic science and Christian 
doctrine, if we did not unreservedly submit to the decision 
of legitimate authority in all that concerns the bearing and 
the manner of our instructions we should have added another 
dream to those of the Saint-Simoniens and Fourieristes; we 
should not have recovered true science and eternal truth. 

Liberty does not come of itself, it must be seized, says a 
modern writer; it is the same with science, and this is why 
the revelation of absolute truth is never of use to the crowd. 
But at an epoch when the sanctuary is devastated and in 
ruins, because its key has been thrown into the ditch without 
profit to any one, I have felt myself bound to pick it up, and 
I offer it to whomsoever is qualified to take it; such an one 
will become in his turn a teacher of nations and a liberator 
of the world. 

Let the most absolute science, let the highest reason, 
become once more the patrimony of the leaders of the people ; 
let the sacerdotal art and the royal art take back the double 
sceptre of antique initiations, and the social world will once 
more issue from its chaos. Burn the holy images no longer, 
demolish the temples no more; temples and images are 
necessary for men; but drive the hirelings from the house 
of prayer, let the blind be no longer the leaders of the blind, 
reconstruct the hierarchy of intelligence and holiness, and 
recognise only those who know as the teachers of those who 
believe! This book is Catholic, the magnum opus is a 
hierarchic and Catholic work, and if our revelations are 
calculated to alarm the conscience of the simple-minded, it 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


4 i 5 


is a consolation to think that they will not read them. VVe 
address ourselves to men free from prejudices, and we have 
no more wish to flatter irreligion than fanaticism. But if 
there be anything in this world which is essentially unfettered 
and inviolable, it is belief. It is our duty by knowledge and 
persuasion to turn misled imaginations from what is absurd, 
but it would invest their errors with all the dignity and truth 
of the martyr if we attempted to threaten or constrain them. 
So, in religion, universal and hierarchic orthodoxy, restoration 
of temples in all their splendour, re-establishment of all 
ceremonial in its primeval pomp, hierarchic teaching of 
symbolism, mysteries, miracles, legends for the children, light 
for the grown men, who will be far from scandalizing the 
little ones in the simplicity of their faith,—such, in religion, is 
our whole Utopia; and it is also the desire and the need 
of humanity. 

VII. —The Reason of Prodigies, or the Devil 
before Science. 

When science and philosophy, reconciled with faith, shall 
unite in one all the various symbolisms, then will the splen¬ 
dours of the ancient worships flourish once more in the 
remembrance of men, proclaiming the progression of the 
human mind in the intuition of the light of God. But of 
all forms of progress the greatest will be that which, sur¬ 
rendering the keys of nature into the hands of science, 
shall bind for ever the frightful phantom of Satan, and, by 
explaining all the exceptional phenomena of the natural 
world, shall destroy the dominion of superstition and foolish 
credulity. It is to the accomplishment of this progress that 
we have consecrated our life, and spent years in the most 
laborious and difficult researches. We seek to enfranchise 
the altars by overturning the idols; we desire that the man 
of understanding should again become the priest and king 
of nature, and we would preserve, while explaining them, 
all the images Of the universal sanctuary. 

For a large number of readers, magic is the science of 
the devil, as the science of light is the black science. The 
devil and science! It seems that in joining two words so 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


416 

incongruous, the author of this work has revealed before¬ 
hand his whole idea. To bring the mystical personifica¬ 
tion of darkness face to face with light, is not this to destroy 
the spectre of falsehood by truth ? Is it not to disperse 
the deformed nightmares of the night-time before the bright¬ 
ness of the day ? We doubt not that under this impression 
superficial readers will condemn us unheard. Ill-instructed 
Christians will think that we are about to sap their funda¬ 
mental doctrine of ethics by denying hell, while others will 
inquire, what is the use of denouncing those errors which 
have ceased to deceive anyone? It is important, therefore, 
that we should state our object clearly, and solidly establish 
our principles. To the Christians we say first of all: The 
author of this book is a Christian like you : his faith is 
that of a Catholic deeply and strongly convinced; therefore 
his mission is not to deny dogmas, but to combat impiety 
under one of its most dangerous forms, that of erroneous 
belief and superstition. He comes to bring forth out of 
the darkness the black successor of Ahriman, that he may 
expose in open day his gigantic impotence and formidable 
misery; he comes to proffer for the solutions of science the 
antique problem of evil, to dethrone the King of Hades, 
and abase his head beneath the foot of the Cross. Is not 
virginal and maternal science, that science of which Mary 
is the gentle and luminous symbol, predestined also to crush 
the serpent’s head ? 

To so-called philosophers the author says: Why deny 
that which you do not understand ? Is not the incredulity 
which asserts itself in the face of the unknown more rash 
and less consoling than faith ? Does the affrighting figure 
of personified evil make you smile? But moral evil exists, 
it is a lamentable fact; it reigns in certain souls, it is 
incarnate in certain men ; demons therefore do exist, and 
the worst of these demons is Satan. Nevertheless, good 
only is infinite; the sphere of evil is contracted, and for 
this reason, if God be the eternal object of faith, the devil 
belongs to science. As a fact, in what Catholic symbol is 
he mentioned? Would it not be blasphemy to say, “I 
believe in him ” ? 

I believe in the devil, the most mighty destroyer, dis- 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


4 i 7 


turber of heaven and of earth, and in Antichrist his only 
son, our persecutor, who will be conceived by an evil spirit, 
born of a violated virgin, will be glorified, will reign, and 
will ascend to seat himself on the altar of God, the Father 
Almighty, from whence he will insult the living and the 
dead. I believe in the spirit of evil, the synagogue of 
Satan, the confederacy of the wicked, the perpetuity of 
sins, the perdition of the flesh and eternal death. 

Who will dare to add Amen ? Who does not see that the 
black Credo is wholly opposed to the Church’s, and that the 
believer who affirms the one must necessarily deny the other? 

The devil is named but not defined in Holy Scripture ; 
Genesis nowhere speaks of a supposed fall of angels, it 
attributes the sin of the first man to the serpent, the most 
subtle of the beasts of the field. We know the Christian 
tradition on this subject, but if this tradition be explainable 
by one of the greatest and most universal allegories of science, 
in what way will the solution affect the faith which aspires 
to God alone and despises the pomps and works of Lucifer ? 

Lucifer! The Light-Bearer ! How strange a name is 
given to the spirit of darkness! What, is it he who bears 
light and also blinds weak souls ? Yes, doubt it not, for 
traditions are full of divine revelations and inspirations. 
“ Satan himself transformed! himself into an angel of light,” 
says St Paul. “I have seen Satan fall from heaven like 
a thunderbolt,” says the Saviour of the world. “How art 
thou fallen from heaven,” cries the prophet Isaiah, “ bright 
star who didst herald the morning! ” Lucifer is, therefore, 
a fallen star, a meteor which burns when it no longer 
illuminates. But is this Lucifer a person or a force? Is 
it an angel or a falling thunderbolt ? Tradition supposes it 
to be an angel, but does not the Psalmist say, “He makes 
his angels spirits and his ministers a flaming fire ” ? The 
word angel is given in the Bible to all things commissioned 
of God—messengers or new creations, revealers or scourges, 
resplendent spirits or dazzling objects. The fiery shafts 
which the Most High darts from the clouds are the angels 
of His anger, and this figurative language is familiar to all 
readers of oriental poetry. 

If we define evil as want of rectitude in a given being ; 


2 D 


418 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


moral evil as falsehood in acts, as falsehood is crime in 
speech; injustice as the essence of falsehood, the death of 
moral life, as falsehood is the poison of intelligence; the 
spirit of evil will then be a spirit of death. Those who hear 
him are his dupes, whom he poisons, and if the personifica¬ 
tion of this spirit must be seriously understood, he would 
himself be absolutely dead and absolutely deceived, that is, 
the affirmation of his existence implies an evident contra¬ 
diction. Satan is the personification of all errors, all per¬ 
versities, and, as a consequence, also all weaknesses. If 
God may be defined as He who exists necessarily, can we 
not define His antagonist and enemy as he who necessarily 
does not exist ? 

Deus est non-ens qui est; diabolus est ens qui non est. 
Theologians of the devil, do you dream that Satan can be 
free ? If he be, he can yet return to virtue ; if he be not, 
he is irresponsible, the mere instrument of one stronger than 
himself, the slave of God’s justice; whatsoever he does, that 
God wills. By him God tempts, leads into sin, and eternally 
tortures his feeble creatures. Then Satan is not the monarch 
of darkness but the agent of veiled light; then also is he 
useful to God, and performs the works of God; then too 
he has not been rejected by God, who still holds him in 
His hand. But that which God condemns, He must reject 
for ever. The agent of God is God’s representative, and 
according to the law of good politics, the representative of 
God is God Himself. Hence, in ultimate analysis, the devil 
is God doing evil, a definition as exact as revolting, since 
it affirms the impossible. 

Jesus has said, “ The devil is a liar like his father .” 1 Who 
is the father of the devil ? Whosoever gives him a personal 
existence by living in conformity with his inspirations; the 
man who diabolizes himself is the father of the incarnate 
evil spirit. But there is a rash, impious, monstrous concep¬ 
tion, a conception which is traditional, like the pride of the 
Pharisees, a hybrid creation which has provided the paltry 
philosophy of the eighteenth century with an apparent 
argument against the splendours of Christianity. It is the 


1 See Note 57. 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


419 


false Lucifer of the heterodox legend; it is that angel proud 
enough to believe himself God, courageous enough to 
purchase independence at the price of an eternity of tortures, 
beautiful enough to be able to adore himself in the flood 
of divine light, strong enough to reign still in darkness and 
suffering, and to make a throne of his inextinguishable pyre; 
it is the Satan of the heretical and republican Milton ; it 
is the pseudo-hero of the darksome eternities calumniated 
by hideousness, disguised in horns and talons which would 
befit rather his implacable tormentor. It is the diabolical 
king of evil, as if evil were a kingdom, that devil more in¬ 
telligent than the men of genius who fear his deceptions, 
that black light, that darkness which sees, that power which 
God has not willed, which a mutilated creature could not 
have created, that prince of anarchy served by a hierarchy 
of pure spirits, that exile of God who is, like God, every¬ 
where on earth, more visible, more present to the majority, 
better served than God himself, that conquered one to whom 
the conqueror gives his children to be eaten, that manu¬ 
facturer of the sins of the flesh to whom the flesh is nothing, 
so that he can consequently be nothing to the flesh, unless 
he be a creator and master like God, that immense, realized, 
personified, eternal falsehood, that death which cannot die, 
that blasphemy which the Word of God can never silence, 
that soul-poisoner whom God tolerates in contradiction to 
His power, or preserves, as the Roman emperors preserved 
Locusta, among the instruments of His dominion, that 
tortured one ever living to curse his Judge and to withstand 
Him, since he will never repent. 

There is the irreligious phantom which belies religion ! 
Away with this idol which hides our Saviour ! Down with 
the tyrant of falsehood ! Down with the black god of the 
Manichaeans ! Down with the Ahriman of the old idolaters ! 
Live God alone and His incarnate Logos, Jesus Christ, the 
Saviour of the world, who beheld Satan precipitated from 
Heaven! Live Mary the divine mother, who has crushed 
the head of the infernal serpent! Thus the traditions of 
the saints and the hearts of all the truly faithful unanimously 
cr y ; —To attribute any grandeur whatsoever to the despoiled 
spirit, is to calumniate divinity; to invest the rebellious 


420 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


spirit with any royalty is to encourage revolt, is to be guilty, 
at least in thought, of the crime of those who in the Middle 
Ages were called sorcerers . For all the crimes punished 
formerly by death upon the sorcerers of old are real and the 
greatest of all crimes. They stole fire from .heaven, like 
Prometheus. They bestrode, like Medea, the winged dragons 
and flying serpent. They poisoned the respirable air, like 
the shadow of the manchineel. They profaned holy things, 
and made even the body of the Saviour subservient to 
works of destruction and infamy. How is all this possible ? 
Because there exists an agent which is natural and divine, 
material and spiritual, a universal plastic mediator, a common 
receptacle of the vibrations of motion and the images of 
forms, a fluid and a force, which may be called in some 
way the Imagination of Nature. By means of this force all 
nervous apparatuses secretly communicate together; thence 
come sympathy and antipathy, thence dreams, thence are 
produced the phenomena of second sight and extra-natural 
vision. This universal agent of Nature’s operations is the 
Od force of the Hebrews and of Baron Reichenbach, it is 
the Astral Light of the Martinists, and we prefer the latter 
explanation as more explicit. The existence and possible 
use of this force is the Great Arcanum of practical magic ; 
it is the thaumaturgic rod and the key of black magic. 
The Astral Light magnetizes, heats, lights, touches as with 
loadstone, attracts, repels, vivifies, destroys, coagulates, 
separates, breaks, and reunites all things under the impetus 
of powerful wills. God created it on the first day when 
He said, “ Fiat Lux ! ” It is in itself a blind force, but 
can be directed by the leaders of souls, who are spirits of 
action and energy. This at once explains the whole theory 
of prodigies and miracles. How, in fact, could both bad 
and good force Nature to expose her exceptional forces? 
How could there be both divine and diabolical miracles? 
How could the reprobate, erring, perverse spirit have in 
some cases greater power than the spirit of justice, so 
powerful in its simplicity and wisdom, if we do not assume 
the existence of an instrument which all can make use of, 
under certain conditions, on the one side for the greatest 
good, on the other for the greatest evil ? 


THE RELIGION OF MAGIC 


421 


The magicians of Pharaoh at first performed the same 
prodigies as Moses; the instrument they used was, there¬ 
fore, the same, the influence alone was different, and when 
they confessed themselves conquered, they proclaimed that 
for them human power had reached its limits, and that 
Moses must be possessed of superhuman attributes. Now, 
this took place in Egypt, mother of magical initiations, in 
that land where all was occult science and sacred, hier¬ 
archic teaching. Notwithstanding, was it more difficult to 
cause flies to appear than to cause frogs? Certainly not; 
but the magicians were aware that the fluidic projection by 
which they fascinated the eyes could not extend beyond 
certain limits, and that for them already those limits had 
been surpassed by Moses. 


PART XI 

THE GREAT PRACTICAL SECRETS 


I.—The Indefectible Principles. 

Let us now sum up by establishing certain unchangeable 
principles which will serve as the foundation and the crown 
of all that we have written. 

There are two means by which man can attain certitude, 
and these are mathematics and common sense. 

ii. 

There may be truths which exceed common sense, but 
there are none which contradict mathematics. 

iii. 

Whosoever pronounces the word impossible, outside pure 
mathematics, is wanting in prudence, says Arago, which is 
equivalent to affirming that, outside pure mathematics, there is 
no complete, catholic, and absolute certitude. 


iv. 

Outside complete, catholic, and absolute certitude there 
can only be beliefs and opinions. 


v. 

Beliefs and ^opinions do not admit of demonstration; they 
are selected as_a matter w of taste, or accepted as a matter of 
policy. 

423 

/ 



THE GREAT PRACTICAL SECRETS 


423 


VI. 

Opinions that are useful should be encouraged, while those 
which are dangerous or objectionable should be repressed. 
The necessary struggle between conservatives and innovators, 
is thus explained, but by regarding, or affecting to regard, 
what is evidently useful as dangerous, conservatives become 
persecutors. 

VII. 

Pure mathematics are self-existent ; no will produces them, 
and no power can limit them. They are eternal laws which 
cannot be infringed by man, and from which escape is 
impossible. 

VIII. 

In things which exceed common sense, that which appears 
to be absurd may still be true, but what is contrary to the 
laws of mathematics is actually and positively absurd, and in 
such an absurdity only a fool will believe. 


IX. 

The sign of the cross, which is the intersection of two lines 
equilibrated by each other, has ever been regarded as a divine 
symbol. It is the Tau of the ancient Hebrews, the Chi (^) 
of Greeks and Christians; in mathematics the sign + repre¬ 
sents the infinite, as does x the unknown. Let science be 
extended as it may, represent its first step by Alpha and its 
last by Omega, and the unknown will be always before you, 
enforcing recognition, so that the invariable formula will be 
n + Whatsoever we learn is wound off from the reel of 
the unknown, which is never wholly unwound, and this it is 
which produces all things. We do not know what it is, so 
we personify it and call it God. This personification seemed 
once to be realized on earth, but the God-Man died upon the 
Cross, namely, on the eternal which now remains for us 
alone. 

x. 

The hypothetical personification of the Infinite must itself 
be infinite and essentially excludes individual unity. Every 
individuality is limited by some other individuality unless it 


424 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


suppresses all others ; God, on the contrary, as the principle 
of all individualities, cannot be an individual, and it is on 
this account that he is affirmed to be one in several persons. 
Three is a mystic number, representing the generation of all 
numbers. 

XI. 

God never speaks to men except through men, nor does he 
effect anything in nature save only through the laws of nature. 

XII. 

The supernatural is that which exceeds our natural intelli¬ 
gence and our knowledge of the laws of nature. 

XIII. 

God himself should not be regarded as supernatural by 
theologians, since they reason upon his nature. 

xiv. 

The fathers of the Nicene Council attributed a substance to 
God by affirming that the Son is of the same substance as the 
Father. If it be impossible to admit both a finite and infinite 
substance without confounding them, the decision of this 
Council might furnish arguments to pantheists and even 
materialists. 

xv. 

If God, as Catholicism teaches, have created us to know, 
love, and serve Him, thus obtaining life eternal, and if, as 
Christ Jesus told us, that which we do unto our neighbour 
we do unto God, it follows that God has created men to 
know, love and serve each other, so attaining eternal life. In 
such case philanthropy must be the true worship of God, and 
every religion which does not inspire, augment, and perfect 
philanthropy must be a false religion. 

xvi. 

A religion does not inspire philanthropy if its consequence 
be the reprobation and eternal punishment of the majority of 
men, or of some men, or even of a single man. But this does 
not impeach the true Catholic doctrine which employs repro- 


THE GREAT PRACTICAL SECRETS 


425 


bation as a threat and is in reality salvation offered to all men. 
He that loveth not his brother abideth in death, says St John, 
and those who are rejected by philanthropy are those who will 
not love. 

XVII. 

Were God, as it is so absurdly supposed, an omnipotent 
personage, who insisted upon being honoured by conventional 
ceremonies, he would have revealed these in an incontestible 
and evident manner before the face of the whole world, and 
there would be a single form of religious worship on earth; 
but this is not the case, and he has only impressed upon all 
the duty and necessity of loving. Hence philanthropy is 
alone the true religion, alone really Catholic, that is, universal. 

XVIII. 

Every word of blessing and love is the Word of God. 
While every word of malediction or hatred is the cry of human 
wickedness, which men have personified under the name of 
the devil. 

XIX. 

An act of philanthropy, even the most imperfect, is more 
religious and more meritorious than all fasts, all genuflections, 
and all prayers. 

xx. 

The attraction by which the sexes are joined together is not 
philanthropic, and, on the contrary, is often the most brutal 
of all egoisms. 

XXI. 

This attraction only merits the name of love when it is 
sanctified by sentiments of self-devotion and sacrifice. 

XXII. 

The man who kills a woman because she no longer loves him 
is both coward and assassin, yet this does not justify adultery. 
Whatsoever can be said on this subject has been said, however, 
by Jesus Christ. 

XXIII. 

The law must always be rigorous, but justice is indulgent. 


426 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


XXIV. 

The little suffer for the great, but the great are responsible 
for the little. The rich will pay the debt of the poor. 

xxv. 

The best things when corrupted are worse than bad things. 
What is more venerable than the priesthood, and what more 
contemptible than an evil priest? The duties of the priesthood 
are so sublime and exalted above human nature that every 
priest who is not a saint is bad, which explains the discredit 
that falls upon the priesthood when the religious sentiment is 
feeble. The gospels tell us that Christ found a good thief, 
but they nowhere say that He met with a good priest. 

XXVI. 

The good priest is self-renunciation incarnate, he is philan¬ 
thropy uplifted into a divine ideal; the bad priest is one who 
sells prayers and uses the sacred vessels as stew-pans. 

XXVII. 

All that does good is itself good, and whatsoever does evil 
is bad. 


XXVIII. 

All that affords us pleasure seems good in our eyes, and that 
which troubles or afflicts us appears bad, but we are deceived 
frequently, and these errors constitute the extenuating circum¬ 
stances of sin. 


XXIX. 

It is impossible to love evil for its own sake when we know 
what it is, and when it is stripped of the semblance of 
goodness. 

XXX. 

Evil is devoid of any real existence, or, to speak accurately, 
it does not exist in an absolute manner; it is incontestable 
that what ought not to be is not. 


THE GREAT PRACTICAL SECRETS 427 


XXXI. 

That which we term evil is the shadow necessary to the 
manifestation of light; metaphysical evil is error and physical 
evil pain, but involuntary evil is excusable. To know certainly 
that we are deceiving ourselves and to persist therein is no 
longer self-deception, but the attempt to deceive others. As 
for physical pain, it is a preservative and antidote against the 
abuse of pleasure; it tests the patience of the wise, admonishes 
the thoughtless, and punishes the wicked. Hence it is a good 
rather than an evil. 


XXXI. 

Disorder in nature is invariably apparent, and alleged mir¬ 
acles are either exceptional phenomena or a juggler’s tricks. 


XXXII. 


When you witness an occurrence which seems opposed to 
laws made evident by mathematics, be assured that your 
observation has been imperfect, or that you have been either 
duped or hallucinated. 

XXXIII. 

Truth needs no miracles, and no miracles can establish a 
falsehood. 


xxxiv. 

The general laws of nature are known to science, but all 
forces and all agents are not as yet known. A sufficient in¬ 
sight has been obtained into animal magnetism to shew that 
it certainly exists, but science treats it as a problem which it 
has not attempted to solve. 


xxxv. 

People continually inquire why the extraordinary phenomena 
of magnetism are never produced in the presence of men of 
learning. It is because few men of learning have the courage 
to attest, when they have witnessed, the occurrence of an 
inexplicable phenomenon. 


428 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


XXXVI. 

The light we perceive is a part only of the infinite light, the 
few solar rays which correspond with our visual apparatus. 
The sun itself is a lamp adjusted to our dim sight; it is a 
luminous point in that space which would be darkness to the 
eyes of our body, but is resplendent for the intuition of our 
souls. 

XXXVII. 

The word magnetism expresses the action and not the 
nature of the great universal agent which serves as mediator 
between thought and life. This agent is the infinite light, or, 
seeing that the light is itself only phenomenal, it is rather the 
light-bearer, the great Lucifer of Nature, the mediator between 
matter and spirit, the first creature of God, but termed the 
devil by impostors and the ignorant. 

XXXVIII. 

What is more absurd and more impious than to attribute 
the name of Lucifer to the devil, that is, to personified evil. 
The intellectual Lucifer is the spirit of intelligence and love ; 
it is the paraclete, it is the Holy Spirit, while the physical 
Lucifer is the great agent of universal magnetism. 

xxxix. 

To personify evil and exalt it into an intelligence which is 
the rival of God, into a being which can understand but love 
no more—this is a monstrous fiction. To believe that God 
permits this evil intelligence to deceive and destroy his feeble 
creatures is to make God more wicked than the devil. By 
depriving the devil of the possibility of love and repentance, 
God forces him to do evil. Moreover a spirit of error and 
falsehood can only be a folly which thinks, nor does it deserve 
indeed the name of spirit. The devil is God’s antithesis, and 
if we define God as He who is we must define His opposite as 
he who is not. 

XL. 

We must seek for the spirit of Dogmas, while receiving 
their letter in its integrity as the priestly sphinx transmits it. 


THE GREAT PRACTICAL SECRETS 429 

The letter is obviously absurd, but this is to induce us to 
seek higher. It is certain that to act one must be, that to sin 
one must have a conscience; hence no one can be born 
guilty. It is also certain that no one can make something 
out of nothing, that God cannot be a man, nor man God ; 
that God can neither suffer nor die, that a woman who gives 
birth to a child cannot be a virgin, and so forth. No one 
can seriously affirm the opposite of these palpable truths 
without announcing that there is a mystery, namely, a 
concealed sense which must be ascertained and understood, 
under pain of becoming either unbeliever or fool. 

XLI. 

The excuse of so-called atheists is the deplorable concep¬ 
tion which the masses entertain of God, whom they have 
endowed with their own vices, and have imagined that they 
were exalting Him, when they extended such vices to para¬ 
doxical proportions. Thus :— Pride. —God’s sole object is 
His own glory, which He finds in the humiliation of rivals, 
whereas he can have no rivals. For this glory He tortures 
His wretched creatures eternally, and for this He has , killed 
His Son. Avarice .—The absolute master of all good things, 
He metes only misery to the majority of His children, 
distributing His favours to a small number, and then slowly 
and with parsimony. Envy .—He is a jealous God, who 
proscribes liberty, misleads the reason of the wise, and shews 
preference to the ignorant and idiotic. Greed .—He is never 
satiated by the flesh of His victims ; He required holocausts 
of bulls under the old law, and inhales the steam of human 
victims, burning at the stake, under the new. Luxury .—He 
demands virgins like the Minotaur; He has seraglios of 
languishing, desirous damsels, He has monks tortured by 
obscene nightmares ; He has invented celibacy to create 
phantoms and unnatural dreams, more immodest than the 
orgies of old Rome. A?iger .—The main subject of the sacred 
books, and the great theme of sermons, is the wrath of God, 
which lets loose pestilence, and hollows out hell for eternity. 
Sloth .—After an eternity of repose, He labours for six days, 
giving daily one order, after which He felt need of further rest. 


430 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Was not St John correct when, after representing evil under 
the form of a monster with Seven heads, he tells us that men 
fell down before this beast and adored it! The apostle adds 
that anti-Christianity must animate the image of this beast, 
causing it to speak, and that the world will bow down before 
this living simulacrum of human folly. Let us beware of 
thinking that this could ever be realized in the person of a 
sovereign Catholic pontiff; doubtless the reference is in¬ 
tended to some Antipope, or possibly the grand Lama of 
Thibet. 

XLII. 

St Vincent de Lerins says :—That only pertains to the true 
Catholic or universal doctrine, which has been admitted at 
all times, in all places, and by all people. This would 
simplify symbolism marvellously, and indefinitely extend the 
Church. 

XLIII. 

Objection to the instruction of theologians is met com¬ 
monly by asking : Does your intellect exceed St Augustine’s ? 
Is your genius greater than Bossuet’s ? Does your pene¬ 
tration exceed that of Fenelon ? But these are ridiculous 
questions, when the issue is one of common sense. Pascal 
would have excelled me in mathematics, yet if I had been 
contemporary with that great man, and had he said, or 
permitted it to be said, in my presence that two and two 
make five, I should have counted his authority as nothing. 

XLIV. 

Whether great or learned men have held their peace or 
have spoken after a given manner, assuredly they had good 
reasons for speech and silence. Exalted truths are not 
suited to base souls; children must have their fables and 
cowards their intimidation ; there must be absurdities for 
folly, and mysteries for credulity. Through dark glasses only 
can we dare to look upon the sun, which otherwise would be 
black and blinding. God for us is like a sun; we must walk 
by His light with bent eyes ; if we seek to gaze fixedly upon 
Him, our sight fails. Theology is the most dangerous and 


THE GREAT PRACTICAL SECRETS 431 

melancholy of sciences, for it wrongly constitutes itself a 
science of God. It is rather the science of man’s folly which 
would explain the inscrutable mystery of the Divine. 

XLV. 

The light of God illuminates us all, for it is our conscience. 
To fulfil the good towards which it impels us and to avoid the 
evil against which it admonishes us—such is the sum of our 
duty to God. 

XLVI. 

God plants the idea in the infinite, and the rays of suns 
bring to birth the germs in the planets. The animals have 
issued from the earth like trees, and like the trees they did 
not come forth full in form and size ; species, like individuals, 
have their embryotic stages. To imagine that God first 
moulded a clay statue, and then breathed into its face is to 
accept the child’s fable that babies are found in cabbage-beds. 
Is God denied or his glory diminished by refusing to regard 
him as a modeller in clay? Nature produces everything 
progressively and by slow degrees, working through the 
orderly functions of forces inherent in substance, while the 
Divine Word guides the forces towards the ideal of form. 
Nature executes but does not invent. Thoughts designed in 
matter originate from matter, though matter does not think. 
From the evolution of the first living cell to the perfection of 
the human form, God has said to the forces of nature: Let 
us make man, and through millions of years, which are to him 
as a moment, this behest has endured. Genesis is not the 
natural history of man but the beginning of his religious epic. 
The primitive pair is human unity established in the first 
family of believers. When the breath of immortality was 
breathed by God into the face of man, man had already a 
face; what else was he therefore but a species of anthropoid 
animal ? Man certainly does not descend from the ape, but 
ape and man possibly descend from the same primitive animal. 
Darwin’s theory does not contradict the Bible, but restores to 
it the character of the symbolic Lion, which is exclusively 
religious; the great week of creation is a series of geological 


432 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


epochs, and God is said to rest when man begins to under¬ 
stand that the universe moves on alone. 

XLVII. 

The supernatural is the eternal paradox of infinite desire. 
Man longs to be assimilated with God, and is so assimilated 
in the Catholic Eucharist. From the rationalistic point of 
view and regarded in a purely natural manner, this communion 
is a monstrous extravagance. To eat the spirit of God and 
the body of a man ! How can one eat a spirit, and especially 
an infinite spirit ? It is madness ! And to eat the body of a 
man—that is horrible ! Theophagy and androphagy ! What 
claims to immortality! At the same time, can anything be 
more beautiful, more consoling, more truly divine than the 
Catholic communion ? The religious need inborn in man 
will never find a fuller satisfaction, and, once believed in, 
its truth is vividly experienced. Faith within certain limits 
creates what it affirms; hope in the superhuman never 
deceives and there is no betrayal in the love of the divine. 
The First Communion is the coronation of human royalty, 
the commencement of the earnest side of life, the apotheosis 
and transfiguration of childhood, the most pure of all joys and 
the truest of all felicities. 


XLVIII. 

There is therefore something necessary to reason and 
nature in order to explain, justify, and adequately minister to 
the highest aspirations of both. From this point of view the 
supernatural is natural, and the paradoxical formulation of 
indispensable hypotheses becomes perfectly reasonable. The 
human spirit constructs the impossible in order to attain the 
infinite. 

XLIX. 

According to the Fathers of the Church, the ancient Law 
was merely an image and shadow of the new law. They do 
not say that the astonishing stories of the Bible are allegories, 
because allegory is a dangerous word, but they affirm them to 
have been images only of the new doctrine inaugurated by 
Jesus Christ, the basis of which doctrine is that God is 


THE GREAT PRACTICAL SECRETS 


433 


personally united to humanity, so that we must love and 
serve God in man ; in a word, we must love one another, and 
this is the law and the prophets. Nothing then is true in the 
Bible save that which conforms with the Gospels, and the 
spirit of the Gospels is the spirit of charity. 

L. 

Love one another—do not revile, curse, excommunicate, 
persecute, or burn each other. Love one another—and 
therefore help, console, support and bless each other. 
Charity is humanity reinforced by a divine principle; it is 
solidarity enriched by self-devotion; it is the spirit of the 
saints, and consequently the true spirit of the Catholic or 
Universal Church. No one belongs to this Church who is 
possessed with an opposite spirit. But charity in the Church 
should before all things preserve the hierarchy and unity. It 
is rightful to protest against the abuse of authority, but not 
against authority itself. There is just now a new sect of 
Protestants who term themselves Old Catholics, as if the 
child just born could call itself old because it has had a 
grandfather. The ancestors of these ridiculous Protestants 
were not Old Catholics, who would have died a thousand 
deaths rather than be divided from the hierarchy and 
authority; they were rather the heretics of all ages, and their 
great ancestor is Satan, that unsubmitted Old Catholic. 


LI. 

If religion must be one, holy, universal; if it must preserve 
and continue the chain of tradition; if it must rest on a 
lawful and hierarchic authority; if it must realize and impart 
what it promises; if it must have signs of power and consola¬ 
tions for all; if it must veil for weak eyes the eternal truth; 
if it must unite in one sheaf all the aspirations and all the 
hopes of the most exalted souls—it can only be Catholic, and, 
sooner or later, all souls will return to Catholicity, when some 
Pope whom God has illuminated, boldly disavows the petty 
passions, full of greed and hatred, which characterize clerical 
Catholicism; when a learned clergy shall be competent to 
reconcile the lights of reason with the obscurities of faith; 


434 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


when the cultus, emancipated from material interest, shall be 
no longer an object of commercial enterprise. This will 
come to pass because it ought to come to pass, and it will 
then be discovered that in Christian doctrine, as in the earlier 
portions of the Bible, there are images and shadows of the 
religion of futurity which indeed does already exist, and might 
designate itself as Messianism, Paracletism, or better still, 
absolute Catholicity, and will be the light of all spirits and the 
eternal life of all souls. 


II.—Eternal Life, or the Peace of God. 

The end of all occult philosophy is to assure us that un¬ 
alterable serenity of soul which is the life of Heaven and 
the surpassing peace of the elect. To attain such peace it 
is necessary :— 

i. 

To believe in the wisdom of God and the harmony of 
natural laws. This faith will prevent us from anticipating 
evil, and being vexed by disorders which we cannot pre¬ 
vent, for what appears irregular to us is often the result of 
a law which escapes us. We shall find in this consideration 
the great secret of resignation. 


ii. 

Never to disturb ourselves by the apprehension of evil, 
for the evil which may overtake us will never be stronger 
than ourselves. There is but one real evil, injustice, and 
it is in our power to be just. Calamities which are foreign 
to our conscience are either trials or favours of Providence. 

hi. 

To labour unceasingly in the reformation of our charac¬ 
ters. By our characteristic vices we torment ourselves and 
others. A vicious character is therefore a habitual injustice, 
which deserves, and entails unfailingly, both trouble and 
reprobation. 


THE GREAT PRACTICAL SECRETS 


435 


IV. 

Never to surrender ourselves wholly to pleasure. Pleasure 
exists for us, but we are not made for it. 


v. 

To believe sincerely in the indestructibility of all that is 
good, all that is true, all that is beautiful, and all that is 
pure. 

vi. 

To believe that suffering is production, production a 
struggle, struggle progress, and progress true life. 


VII. 


Never to permit the cynicism of incredulity to parade 
itself before us. 


VIII. 


! To believe in the reality of all that is good, even in the 
most fleeting forms of life. A glass of water given in My 
Name shall deserve eternal life, said the great Initiator. It 
is then of an infinite value, like all that comes from God. 


IX. 

To be humble, and never imagine that we are great 
because we possess a great knowledge or profound thoughts. 
One dewdrop reflects all the glories of a beautiful day, yet 
nothing thereof belongs to it; it is thus with our souls. 
The sun drinks the dew, and God can draw to Himself all 
our intelligence and genius. We are but trembling and 
fugitive mirrors, like the drop of water, and should nature 
break us, there would be no void in immensity. Heaven 
has no need of us ; it is we who have need of Heaven. 


x. 

To preserve ourselves from puerile beliefs which trouble 
the conscience, and to hold one idea more than all in 
detestation—that God desires to confound human reason 


43 6 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


and is honoured by prejudice or folly, that, like the Sphinx, 
He proposes enigmas for solution, and kills or tortures ever¬ 
lastingly those who solve them, and those who, unable to 
do so, do not harass themselves about them; whereas the 
Supreme Reason which exists in God seeks the elevation of 
man’s reason to itself by faith in His rectitude and justice, 
the God of the sages being the light of generous souls, and 
not the murky agitation of the slothful and servile mind. 

XI. 

To raise the independence of the conscience above all 
human influences and all fears, since nothing worse than 
death can befall us, and death we have no cause to dread, 
for it is a natural and necessary thing, which independence 
and mental greatness will survive, when the mind irrevoc¬ 
ably joins itself to truth and justice, which are eternal. 

XII. 

Never to be overcome by love. Love because we ought, 
and because we wish it. Love becomes a glory when it is 
in no sense shameful. Its joys wait on those who never 
purchase them at the price of infamy. To prefer one’s 
pleasure before one’s honour is to be base. Now, by base¬ 
ness we become unworthy even of a courtesan’s love. A 
woman despises the man she degrades, and when she feels 
herself contemptible, she esteems the man who contemns 
her. 

XIII. 

Not to leave the performance of our own duties to 
Providence. Never to complain of the evil we can prevent. 
To look upon the struggle against evil as our first duty, 
assured that we should be fools and impious if we imputed 
to God the inconveniences which result from our own folly 
and idleness. 

xiv. 

To seek the infinite in the intellectual and moral order 
only. The whole world is not large enough to satisfy our 
soul £ it thirsts for anjtinfinite perfection, which sufficiently 


THE GREAT PRACTICAL SECRETS 


437 


proves that it is immortal. The treasures of earth when 
immense are only an immense embarrassment, and never 
satisfy their owner. The dignities of this world are often 
great calamities; all that can end is as if it were already 
ended, and the vulture of Prometheus returns unceasingly 
to enlarge the void in the heart of man who is chained to 
the rock of power, for the more he is elevated above others 
the more is he lonely, and God presses with an infinite 
weight on the isolation of pride. 


xv. 

Not to believe in delusions; God’s realities being a 
thousand times more admirable than man’s dreams, we 
must never be content to imagine what we can estimate 
and know. Youth, friendship, love, poetry, glory—all 
these are true, all these are eternally true, notwithstanding 
that everything changes its zone like spring. Spring is no 
illusion for the swallows; they have the boldness to follow 
and overtake it always. 

XVI. 

To do one’s duty in the present and fear nothing for the 
future. To be happy when happiness offers itself as if we 
had but one day to live, provided that we find happiness 
in the satisfaction of legitimate desires. Resignation to 
God, confiding joy in the midst of nature’s festivals, gaiety 
which intoxicates itself in the sunlight, enthusiasm for the 
beautiful, devotion to the good, all these do not calculate, 
do not reason with, the anxiety of the morrow. Happy is 
he, says Horace, who each day can say to himself—This 
day I have lived; let the tempest come to-morrow, it cannot 
deprive me of the serenity of the day that is closing.—You 
have enough of daily trial, said the Christus; do not store 
up disquietude for the morrow; sufficient to each day is the 
evil thereof. . . . Do you wish to have no apprehension for 
the morrow ? Do good to-day; good actions are the seed 
of happiness. 

XVII. 

To obey the law; forestall duty, but never endure slavery 
The deaths of the martyrs were sublime because the outrage 


43 8 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


of their conscience was attempted. We cannot renounce 
our convictions, affections, or national habits, at the com¬ 
mand of an imperious master. We may be silent in the 
face of oppression, we may abstain from armed resistance, 
but let us die, if need be, embracing the altar of the father- 
land. 


XVIII. 

Never to dispute about the essential nature of God. 
Faith in God should make men better, not lead their 
reason astray; and how should we define the Infinite ? 
How explain what we cannot understand? The more we 
dispute, the less we adore. Let us reason as we please on 
the necessity of adoration, but when we pronounce the 
name of the Indefinable, let us preserve supreme silence. 
Let us bow and adore ! It is not the elephant of the 
Brahmans, nor the three-headed Ancient of the Gnostics, 
nor anything which the idolatry of the nations has conse¬ 
crated; it is nothing that we can see, handle, hear, taste, 
or describe. It is that which we should worship in the pro¬ 
found peace of the spirit, and in the heart’s enthusiasm. 


XIX. 

To respect the conscience of others and never impose on 
them even truth. Break not forcibly the yoke of slaves 
who love their yoke! Be devoted always, never too 
zealous ! If souls rejoice in their folly it is cruel to deprive 
them of it without restoring their reason. We must have 
patience; we must leave the fakir to his chain and the old 
world to its idols, waiting till all this shall end of itself. 
Lose not precious time by denouncing the darkness in vain 
discourses; make the light shine, but let it not be the light 
of a consuming torch. Overthrow henceforth neither the 
statues of Jupiter nor of St Nicholas, even when an imbecile 
people attempt to adore St Nicholas. Philosophers, respect 
relics if you wish not your books to be burned. The light 
shines for all men coming into the world, but all have the 
right to shut or open their eyes as may please them. 


THE GREAT PRACTICAL SECRETS 439 


xx. 

To allow no real existence to evil. God, in fact, does 
not will it; Nature rejects it; suffering protests against it; 
reasonable beings cannot desire it; universal harmony leaves 
no place for it; life triumphs continually over it, as over 
death. Satan cannot therefore be a king; he is the most 
abject slave of the fatality he has evoked. The eternal 
reprobation of evil consists in the eternal triumph of good. 
Order cures disorder by punishment, and punishment itself 
is a good, since it is a cure. Evil, moreover, condemns and 
destroys itself. Pride is a diadem of humiliation, lust an 
abortion of pleasure, avarice the cultus of wretchedness. 
The ways of evil are broad at the beginning, but they 
contract in proportion to our advance, and end in the 
gradual crushing and suffocation of their victim. They are 
blind alleys where we must perish if we lack the boldness 
and strength to turn back. In order to prove the existence 
of another world, it is sometimes asserted that the wicked 
can be happy in this life. This is untrue; the wicked are 
the last and most miserable of men. 

XXI. 

Not to seek the glory which comes from the premature 
esteem of men, but that derived from honour, that conscious¬ 
ness of justice and self-devotion which soon or late will 
produce its effect. Men finish by submitting to the 
ascendancy of genius and talent, but they detest it because 
envy is the vice and torment of the weak. _ For them glory 
is but a triumph of egoism, because, egotists as they are, 
they cannot understand it otherwise. They invariably deny 
the existence of voluntary sacrifice, and seek for some 
slavish and infamous motive in the renunciation of the 
heroes of humanity. Let them rail; they speak without 
knowledge, and with no wish to listen. They crown 
willingly the inanity which does not give them umbrage. 
Having no need of their crowns, it may well be that they 
may bear them one day to our tombs. And should they 
even despoil our tombs, what harm could that do to our 
remains? What would that matter above all to our souls, 


440 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


if these, as we doubt not, survive our earthly errors ? Love 
good for good’s sake, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, 
the beautiful for beauty’s sake, truth for the sake of truth. 
Think you that Homer composed his admirable poems in 
view of those alms of which he nevertheless stood in need ? 
The cities of Greece, wherein he begged his bread, dispute 
his name and birthplace, and it is uncertain which per¬ 
formed for him the final honours and deserved to possess 
his remains. “ Let the dead bury their dead,” says the 
Christus. “ Seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, 
and all other things shall be added unto you.” 

III.—Last Words concerning the Great Secret. 

Herein lieth the Great Arcanum of Magic—not to give way 
before the unchangeable forces of nature, but to direct them; 
not to be enslaved by them, but make use of them to the 
profit of immortal liberty. Nature is intelligent but not free ; 
the celestial bodies possess instinctive souls like animals and 
fertilize one another; the planets are the seraglio of the sun, 
and the suns are the obedient sheep of God. The earth has 
a soul which obeys the sun, subject to the decrees of fate, 
and man, in like manner, instinctively. But great knowledge 
and wisdom, or, alternatively, great exaltation, are necessary 
to any man who would command the soul of the earth. Folly 
has its prodigies like wisdom, and indeed in greater abund¬ 
ance, because wisdom seeks not prodigies, but tends rather, 
and naturally, to check their occurrence. It is said that the 
devil has his miracles, and, in the sense which the uninstructed 
masses attribute to the term, he is indeed almost the only 
worker of wonders. Everything that tends to estrange man 
from science and from reason is most certainly the work of 
an evil principle. 

The sun possesses intelligence but the earth is devoid of 
mind, and wanting solar influence and human toil, she would 
produce nothing. The sun impregnates her, man delivers 
her, and it is reluctantly, with a bad grace, that she yields 
to the embrace of her spouse or suffers the ministry of her 
physician. Animals and savage beasts, creatures badly 
organized harmful insects, parasitical and venomous plants, 


THE GREAT PRACTICAL SECRETS 


441 


abortions, monsters, plagues—these are the fruits of her 
clumsiness. She resists to her utmost, and her unwillingness 
is not a crime, for she is the mere creature of law, and is 
a counterpoise to human activity. According to hieratic 
tradition, man, the only son of God, ought to command the 
earth, but, having infringed the law of God, he has himself 
ceased to be free, and slaves are equal in their servitude. 
Ihe soul of the earth is hostile to man, because she is 
conscious, so to speak, that he has no longer the right to 
rule her; she therefore resists and deceives him, producing 
dreams, nightmares, visions, and hallucinations, favoured 
herein by fanaticism, drunkenness, debauchery, and all 
nervous disorders. Madmen, hysterical women, cataleptics, 
and somnambulists are all indifferently under her direct 
influence. She is called also the astral light, and she it is 
who produces the phantasmagoria of spiritualism. We admit 
that the name of astral light does not perfectly apply to the 
soul of the earth; this instinctive power of our planet mani¬ 
fests itself by negative electricity and magnetism; positive 
electricity, heat, and light are owing to solar influence. The 
radiation of the soul of the earth is more especially during the 
night, because the light restrains and repels its effluvia; it is 
in the dead of the long winter nights that phantoms most 
commonly appear. 

A man is not a saint because he has visions, but he may 
have visions and yet be a saint; visions, even among saints, 
invariably involve an element of the ridiculous or hideous. 
St Theresa was tormented by blood; she believed herself in 
the stifling embrace of living walls, and beheld a cherub armed 
with a shaft to pierce them. Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque 
saw Jesus Christ open his breast and exhibit his heart all 
palpitating and bleeding. Martin de Gallardon met an angel 
in the guise of a lackey, while the children of La Salette 
decorated the Blessed Virgin with a huge peasant’s bonnet, a 
yellow apron, and roses fastened on her feet. Bernadette 
Soubirons beheld our Lady of Lourdes, veiled like a girl 
about to communicate, with a little blue apron, and yellow 
roses planted in her bare feet. Berbignier saw Jesus Christ 
in the midst of several flat candlestick sockets, and a similar 
element enters into a vision at Pontmain, where four candles 


442 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


are seen fixed to the wall of heaven, with the good virgin in 
the midst of them. Ravaillac beheld the consecrated wafers 
fluttering round his head, and heard a voice which commanded 
him to kill Henry IV. The instinctive soul of the earth 
urgently calls for blood, and favours those exaltations which 
lead to spilling it. Spectres, like crows, seem to scent 
massacres and battles from afar. The death of Caesar, the 
internecine struggle which followed it, and the sanguinary 
proscriptions of the Triumvirate, were announced by the 
prodigies which Virgil celebrates. A short time before the 
war of extermination waged against the Jews by the Romans, 
the Temple swarmed with visions and marvels. The abnormal 
miracles of the convulsionaries heralded the hecatombs of the 
Revolution, itself followed by the great wars of the Empire. 
At the present moment the spirits have turned conjurers, the 
dead haunt our salons, and indulge in liberties with ladies. 
We have passed through the war with Germany, we have 
outlived the Commune—what have we yet to expect? 

Man, the child of earth, remains in magnetic communication 
therewith ; he is himself a special magnet, which, by combina¬ 
tion of imaginations and wills, can indefinitely increase its 
powers. Then inert objects are magnetized, and, influenced 
by the physical soul of the earth, when attracted and ill- 
directed by man, may displace themselves, may be raised, 
and cause cracking noises or raps to be heard. Occasion¬ 
ally even a species of aerial coagulation roughly bodies forth 
some fugitive form; persons think that they behold lights or 
hands; dreams clothe themselves with forms; nature seems 
to grow delirious; modern pythonesses scribble new oracles 
at hazard, as unserious as those of the ancients; in a word, 
here as elsewhere, the same causes ever produce the same 
effects. 

Will man at any time succeed in overcoming completely 
this whirling and devouring animal which we call the earth ? 
Not until he has discovered a fulcrum for the lever of Archi¬ 
medes, nor so long as the steed has a chance of throwing its 
rider. Man tortures the earth in vain; it invariably ends by 
swallowing him. Hence it is that the sublime dream of 
Prometheus, that is, of human genius, has always been the 
secret of Hermes, in other words, the discovery of a panacea 



443 


THE GREAT PRACTICAL SECRETS 

for disease, old age, and death. That desire for immortality 
which has ever exercised the human soul is a protest against 
our bondage to the voracity of earth, but religion has placed 
immortality in death, and claims only to emancipate that 
portion of our nature which she desires to exalt into heaven. 
But, in the language of symbolism, heaven is spirit and earth 
is matter; heaven is light, earth is darkness; heaven is good, 
earth is evil; heaven is paradise, earth is hell. The theo¬ 
logians, moreover, who believe in a local infernus, can find 
no place for it except in the centre of the earth, which seems 
to indicate that evil is materiality. The earth is indolent 
because she is heavy and material, and as indolence produces 
starvation, the earth engenders imperfect species which mutu¬ 
ally devour one another, and she does so to her own satis¬ 
faction because she fattens on the corpses of her children. 
Warfare is the inevitable condition of existence on this earth 
and the raison d'etre invariably pertains to the strongest. 
Might does not merely take precedence of right but con¬ 
stitutes it; what Darwin terms natural selection is the triumph 
of might. 

Why are there abortions in nature? Why are imperfect 
designs so numerous if Creative Power be omnipotent? 
Because all force has resistance for its fulcrum, because 
inertia gives battle to activity, because shadow equilibrates 
light. The universal sovereign Intelligence foresees every¬ 
thing, and God’s Providence is not a direct and personal 
intervention. In Genesis, God does not create the animals 
but ordains earth to produce them. He has impregnated 
nature, and she has become a mother, who begets unaided; 
she, however, husbands her efforts and simplifies her great 
works; she produces life, and life in turn operates on differ¬ 
entiating forms according to the conditions of environment. 
One effort begets other efforts, one form brings forth other 
forms, and progress is possible only through the law of trans¬ 
formation. The mysteries of nature explain and demonstrate 
those of religion, which otherwise test human understanding 
to the uttermost; divine selection, that is, final salvation, 
connected with the probable reprobation of the majority; the 
narrow gate, regeneration or moral transformation, the resur¬ 
rection or future transformation of the man that now is into 


444 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


a more perfect being. So what has been regarded as likely 
to destroy faith actually fortifies it, and that which seemingly 
must demolish religion re-establishes it. Darwin interprets 
Jesus Christ, and we believe with the more confidence since 
we know better what we ought to believe. These truths will 
sooner or later accomplish the conquest of opinion, and 
opinion when united with truth always takes authority along 
with it. Galileo is condemned at the beginning ; what he 
affirms is admitted later on; and the Church is not less 
infallible, because authority is necessary, and by transmitting 
her authority to the pope, the pope becomes himself infallible 
after an authoritative but not a miraculous manner, for 
authority may assuredly be delegated, but not miracle.- The 
yearning for religion is the primary necessity for the human 
soul; it exists side by side with love and it abides in love. 
One of the foremost scientific men of England, Mr Tyndall, 
observes : “ Other things are woven into the tissue of man, 
the sentiments of veneration, respect, admiration, and not 
only the sexual love to which we have already referred, but 
the love of the beautiful in nature, both physical and moral, 
both poetry and art; there is also that profound sentiment 
which from the first dawn of history, and probably for ages 
anterior to all history, has incorporated itself in the religions 
of the world; one may deride these religions, but what is 
ridiculed is, at most, certain accidents of form ; the immov¬ 
able basis of the religious sentiment in the emotional nature 
of man transcends assault. The problem of all problems at 
this present hour is to provide this sentiment with a rational 
satisfaction.” Now, we believe that we have indicated the 
nature of the solution required in respect of this great 
problem, and that with enough perspicuity to enable writers 
more accredited than ourselves to apply it successfully to the 
legitimate aspirations of the world. The spirit of intelligence 
will come, as Christ has promised, and will teach us all truth. 

The doctrines of the highest science, called magic by the 
ancients, being no longer acknowledged by official science, 
can only be presented to it under the name of paradoxes, a 
word signifying things above reason. Paracelsus, whose 
name implies an elevation of thought, which in a sense is 
paradoxical, designated these as the Archidoxies, or things 


THE GREAT PRACTICAL SECRETS 445 


ultra-reasonable or more than reasonable. God is the grand 
Archidox of the universe; religion is archidoxical, though it 
seems paradoxical; liberty is the paradox or archidox of 
the humanly divine. Absolute reason, absolute knowledge, 
absolute love are archidoxies of human genius; imagination is 
archidoxical in the creation and realization of its paradoxes. 
The will rushes onward to the archidox, and does not pause 
before paradox. Absolute reason is, like the Deity, the 
supreme archidox of the understanding; the absolute for the 
mind is unconditioned reason ; the absolute for the heart is 
infinite perfection; furthermore, the beautiful being the 
radiance of the true, infinite beauty can only exist in the ideal 
personification of truth and love, and this personification, 
realized in man, constitutes Christianity, while realized in 
society, it will be Catholicity. He who said—“I believe 
because it is absurd,” offered us the formula of the archidox 
in a paradoxical shape; both beneath and above reason there 
is the absurd, but the absurdity below is folly and nonsense, 
while that above is enthusiasm and self-sacrifice. Below the 
reason of the crowd there is materialism, above the reason of 
the scientific there is God. Credo quia absurdum ! 


PART XII 

THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES OF 
ELIPHAS LEVI 


I.—Evocation of Apollonius of Tyana. 

In the spring of the year 1854, I repaired to London to 
escape from internal disquietude, and to devote myself, 
without distraction, to study. I had letters of introduction 
to persons of distinction, and to those seeking communica¬ 
tions from the supernatural world. I met with many of the 
latter class, and, amidst much affability, I discovered in them 
a fund of indifference and triviality. They immediately 
required of me the performance of prodigies, as from a 
charlatan. I was not a little discouraged, for, to speak truly, 
so far from being disposed to initiate others into the mysteries 
of ceremonial magic, I had always dreaded its delusions and 
weariness for myself. Moreover, such ceremonies require a 
paraphernalia which is expensive and difficult to collect. I 
immersed myself, therefore, in the study of the supreme 
Kabbalah, and thought no further of English adepts, when 
one day, on returning to my hotel, I found a note in my 
room. This note enclosed half of a card transversely 
divided, and on which I at once recognised the character of 
Solomon’s seal, with a tiny slip of paper, on which was 
written in pencil: “ To-morrow at 3 o’clock, in front of 
Westminster Abbey, the other half of this card will be given 
you.” I kept this singular appointment. A carriage was 
waiting at the place; I held unaffectedly my portion of the 
card in my hand; a footman approached and made a sign 
to me, opening the carriage-door as he did so. Within there 

446 



THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES 


447 


was a lady in black whose face was concealed by a thick veil; 
she motioned me to a seat beside her, displaying the other 
part of the card I had received. The door was shut, the- 
carriage rolled away, and the lady raising her veil, I saw that 
my appointment was with an elderly person, who beneath her 
grey eyebrows had bright black eyes of preternatural fixity. 
“ Sir,” she began, with a strongly-marked English accent, “ I 
am aware that the law of secrecy is rigorous among adepts ; 
a friend of Sir B. L., who has seen you, knows that you have 
been asked for phenomena, and that you have declined to 
gratify curiosity. It is possible that you do not possess the 
necessary materials; I can show you a complete magical 
cabinet, but I must require of you, first of all, the most 
inviolable secrecy. If you do not guarantee this on your 
honour, I will give orders for you to be driven home.” I 
made the required promise, and have kept it faithfully by not 
divulging the name, quality, or abode of the lady, whom I 
soon recognised as an initiate, not actually of the first degree, 
but still of a most exalted grade. We had several long con¬ 
versations, during which she insisted always on the necessity 
of practical experiences to complete initiation. She showed 
me a collection of vestments and magical instruments, even 
lending me certain curious books of which I was in want; in a 
word, she determined me to attempt at her house the experi¬ 
ence of a complete evocation, for which I prepared myself 
during twenty-one days, scrupulously observing the rules laid 
down in the Ritual. 

All was completed on the 24th of July; it was proposed to 
evoke the phantom of the divine Apollonius, and to interro¬ 
gate it about two secrets, one of which concerned myself, 
while the other interested the lady. The latter had at first 
counted on assisting at the evocation with a trustworthy 
person, but at the last moment this person proved timorous, 
and, as the triad or unity is rigorously prescribed in magical 
rites, I was left alone. The cabinet prepared for the evocation 
was situated in a turret; four concave mirrors were hung 
within it, and there was a kind of altar having a white marble 
top, surrounded with a chain of magnetized iron. On the 
marble the sign of the Pentagram was engraved in gold; the 
same symbol was drawn on a new white sheep-skin stretched 


443 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


beneath the altar. In the middle of the marble slab there 
was a small copper brazier with charcoal of alder and laurel 
.wood, while a second brazier was placed before me on a 
tripod. I was vested in a white robe very similar to those 
worn by Catholic priests, but longer and more ample, and I 
wore upon my head a chaplet of vervain leaves entwined 
about a golden chain. In one hand I held a new sword, and 
in the other the Ritual. I lighted the two fires with the 
requisite materials, which had been prepared previously, 
and I began, at first, in a low voice, but rising by degrees, 
the invocations of the Ritual; the flame invested every 
object with a wavering light, and finally went out. I set 
some more twigs and perfumes on the brazier, and when the 
flame started up again, I distinctly saw before the altar a 
human figure larger than life, which dissolved and disappeared. 
I recommenced the evocations, and placed myself in a circle 
which I had already traced between the altar and the tripod; 
I then saw the interior of the mirror which was in front of me, 
and behind the altar, grow brighter by degrees, and a pale 
form grew up there, dilating and seeming to approach gradu¬ 
ally. Closing my eyes, I called three times on Apollonius, 
and, when I reopened them, a man stood before me wholly 
enveloped in a winding-sheet, which seemed to me more 
grey than white; his form was lean, melancholy, and beard¬ 
less, which did not quite recall the picture I had formed 
to myself of Apollonius. I experienced a feeling of intense 
cold, and when I unclosed my lips to interrogate the 
apparition, I found it impossible to utter a sound. I 
therefore placed my hand on the sign of the Pentagram, 
and directed the point of the sword towards the figure, 
adjuring it mentally by that sign not to terrify me in any 
manner, but to obey me. The form thereupon became 
indistinct, and immediately after disappeared. I com¬ 
manded it to return, and then felt, as it were, a breath 
of wind pass by me, and something having touched me 
on the hand which held the sword, the arm was immediately 
benumbed as far as the shoulder. Conjecturing that the 
weapon displeased the spirit, I set it by the point near me, 
and within the circle. The human figure at once re¬ 
appeared, but I experienced such a complete enervation in 


THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES 


449 


all my limbs, and such a sudden exhaustion had taken 
possession of me, that I made two steps to sit down. I 
had scarcely done so when I fell into a deep coma, accom¬ 
panied by dreams of which only a vague recollection 
remained when I recovered myself. My arm continued 
for several days benumbed and painful. The figure had 
not spoken, but it seemed to me that the questions I was 
to ask it had answered themselves in my mind. To that 
of the lady, an inner voice replied, “ Death ! ” (it concerned 
a man of whom she was seeking news). As for myself, I 
wished to learn whether reconciliation and forgiveness 
were possible between two persons who were in my 
thoughts, and the same interior echo impiteously answered, 
“ Dead ! ” 

Here I narrate facts as they actually occurred; I impose 
faith on no one. The effect of this experience on myself 
was incalculable. I was no more the same man; some¬ 
thing from the world beyond had passed into me. I was 
neither gay nor depressed any longer, but I experienced a 
singular attraction towards death, without, at the same 
time, being in any way tempted to suicide. I carefully 
analyzed what I had experienced, and, in spite of an acute 
nervous antipathy, I twice repeated, at an interval of a 
few days only, the same experiment. The phenomena which 
then occurred differed too little from the former to 
require their addition to this narrative. But the conse¬ 
quence of these further evocations was for me the revela¬ 
tion of two Kabbalistic secrets, which, if universally known, 
might change in a short period the basis and laws of society 
at large. 

Am I to conclude from this that I have really evoked, 
seen, and touched the great Apollonius Tyaneus? I am 
neither so far hallucinated as to believe it, nor sufficiently 
unserious to affirm it. The effect of the preparations, 
the perfumes, the mirrors, the pantacles, is a veritable in¬ 
toxication of the imagination, which must act strongly on 
a person already nervous and impressionable. I seek not 
to explain by what physiological laws I have seen and 
touched; I assert solely that I have seen and that I have 
touched, that I saw clearly and distinctly, without dreaming, 


2 F 


45° 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


which is sufficient ground for believing in the absolute 
efficacy of magical ceremonies. I look upon the prac¬ 
tice, however, as dangerous and objectionable; health, both 
moral and physical, would not long withstand such opera¬ 
tions, if once they became habitual. The old lady I men¬ 
tioned, and of whom, subsequently, I had cause to complain, 
was a case in point, for, in spite of her denials, I do not 
doubt that she continually practised necromancy and goetic 
magic. She at times talked complete nonsense, at others 
yielded to insane fits of passion, of which the object could be 
scarcely determined. I left London without revisiting her, 
but I shall faithfully keep my promise to say nothing 
whatsoever which may disclose her identity, or give even a 
hint about her practices, to which she doubtless devoted 
herself unknown to her family, which, as I believe, is 
numerous, and in a very honourable position. 


II.—Ghosts in Paris—The Magician and the Medium 

—£liphas L£vi and the Sect of Eugene Vintras. 

The other week Mr Home determined once more to leave 
Paris, that city where even angels and demons would not long 
pass for wonders, and would have no alternative but a speedy 
return to heaven or hell to escape oblivion and abandonment 
by mortals. Mr Home, with a dejected and disillusionized 
air, took leave of a lady of quality whose generous welcome 
had been one of his chief felicities in France. Madame B., 
hospitable on this day as always, wished to keep him to 
dinner; the mysterious being was on the point of accepting, 
when it was remarked that a Kabbalist, known in the world 
of occult sciences by the publication of a work entitled “The 
Doctrine and the Ritual of Transcendent Magic,” was 
expected. Mr Home changed countenance at once, and 
declared, stammering and with visible anxiety, that he could 
not stay, and that the approach of this professor of magic 
caused him invincible fear. All that could be done to 
reassure him was useless. “I do not judge this man,” he 
said; “ I do not say that he is good or bad; I know nothing 
of him, but his atmosphere distresses me; in his presence I 


THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES 451 

should feel deprived of strength and, as it were, of life.” 
After this explanation Mr Home hastened to take his 
leave. 

This terror on the part of men of prestige in presence of 
the true initiates of science is no new fact in the annals of 
occultism. The history of a vampire who trembled at the 
approach of Apollonius may be found in Philostratus. We 
are unable to say whether Cagliostro would have worked 
miracles before Swedenborg, but he would have certainly 
dreaded the presence of Paracelsus or Henry Khunrath, had 
these great men been his contemporaries. 

Be it far from us, notwithstanding, to denounce Mr Home 
as a low-class sorcerer, that is, as a charlatan. The celebrated 
American medium is as naive and amiable as a child. He is 
an unfortunate being, alive with sensibility, unintriguing and 
defenceless; he is the sport of a terrible force concerning 
the nature of which he is ignorant, and his first dupe is 
undoubtedly himself. 

The study of the phenomena produced in the presence of 
this young man are of the highest importance. On one 
occasion, a Polish gentleman, who was present at one of Mr 
Home’s seances, placed a pencil and a sheet of paper between 
his feet on the ground, and requested some sign of the spirit’s 
presence. For some moments nothing occurred; then 
suddenly the pencil was flung from one end of the room to 
the other. The gentleman stooped, picked up the paper, and 
found thereon three Kabbalistic signs which were understood 
by none present. Mr Home alone seemed to feel great 
annoyance at seeing them, and manifested a certain terror; 
but he refused to explain himself on the nature and meaning 
of the characters. They were, therefore, preserved and were 
shewn subsequently to the same professor of magic whose 
approach was so dreaded by the medium. We have examined 
them, and their description is minutely as follows :— 

They were scored deeply, and the pencil had almost torn 
the paper. They were drawn without order and not in a 
straight line. The first was the sign which the Egyptian 
initiates usually place in the hand of Typhon—a Tau with a 
double vertical line open in the form of a compass, a crux 
unsata with a circular ring above; below the ring a double 


45 2 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


horizontal line, and beneath this a double oblique line in the 
form of a V turned upside down. 

The second character represented the cross of a grand 
hierophant with the three hierarchic transverse lines. This 
symbol, which belongs to the highest antiquity, is still the 
attribute of our sovereign pontiffs, and terminates the superior 
extremity of their pastoral crook. But the sign traced by the 
pencil had this peculiarity that the upper branch, the head of 
the cross, was double, and formed again the terrible Typhonian 
V, the sign of antagonism and separation, the symbol of hatred 
and eternal strife. 

The third character was that which the Freemasons call 
the philosophic cross, a cross with four equal branches, having 
a point in each of the angles. But, instead of the four points, 
there were two only, placed in the two right hand angles, once 
more a sign of separation, strife, and negation. 

The professor, whom it will be permitted us to distinguish 
from the narrator, to avoid wearying our readers by an 
appearance of egotism, the professor then, Maitre Eliphas 
Levi, gave to those assembled in the drawing-room of 

Madame de B-, the scientific explanation of these three 

characters, in the following manner :— 

“These three signs belong to the series of sacred and 
primitive hieroglyphs known only to initiates of the first 
order. The first is the signature of Typhon. It expresses 
the blasphemy of this evil spirit by establishing dualism in 
the creative cause. For the crux ansata of Osiris is an in¬ 
verted lingam, and represents the paternal and active power 
of God—the vertical line issuing from the circle—fertilizing 
the passive Nature—the horizontal line. To double the 
vertical line is to assert that nature has two fathers, it is the 
substitution of adultery in place of divine maternity, it is the 
affirmation of blind fatality, with the eternal conflict of 
appearances in the void as its result, instead of the affirmation 
of an intelligent first cause; it is, therefore, the most ancient, 
authentic, and terrible of the stigmata of hell. It signifies 
the god atheist , it is Satan’s signature, and being of a hieratic 
character, it corresponds to the occult characters of the divine 
world. 

“The second signature belongs to philosophical hien> 




THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES 


453 


glyphs; it represents the ascensional measure of the idea 
and the progressive extension of the form. It is a triple 
lau inverted; it is human thought by turns affirming the 
absolute in the three worlds, and here this absolute is termin¬ 
ated by a fork, that is, by the sign of doubt and antagonism. 
So that if the first character means, There is no God , the 
rigorous signification of the second is that There is no hier¬ 
archic truth. 

“The third, or philosophic cross, has been in all initiations 
the symbol of Nature and her four elementary forms; the 
four points represent the four inexpressible and incommuni¬ 
cable letters of the occult Tetragram, that eternal formula of 
the great Arcanum, G A .*. The two points on the right 
side represent power, those on the left love, and the four 
letters should be read from right to left, beginning at the top 
right-hand side, and thence proceeding to the bottom letter of 
the left, and so on for the others, making St Anthony’s Cross. 
The suppression of the two points to the left signifies, there¬ 
fore, the negation of the Cross, the negation of mercy and 
love; the affirmation of the absolute reign of force, and its 
eternal antagonism, from above below, and from below above; 
the glorification of tyranny and revolt; the hieroglyphic 
sign of the nameless vice which rightly or wrongly was re¬ 
proached against the Templars; the sign of eternal disorder 
and despair. 

Such then are the first revelations of the hidden science 
of the Magi on these extra-natural manifestations. And 
. now let us be permitted to compare other contemporary 
apparitions of phenomenal writings with these signatures, 
for it is a process which science should institute before 
appealing to the tribunal of public reason. No investigation 
and no indication should, therefore, be disdained. 

At Tilly-sur-Seulles, in the vicinity of Caen, a series of 
inexplicable phenomena occurred some years ago, under the 
influence of a medium named Eugene Vintras. Certain 
ridiculous processes and a swindling law-suit caused this 
thaumaturge to fall speedily into oblivion and contempt; 
he was attacked, moreover, with virulence in pamphlets, the 
authors of which were formerly admirers of his doctrines, for 
the medium Vintras meddles with dogmatism. One thing 


454 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


is, nevertheless, noteworthy in the invectives to which he is 
subject, that his adversaries, while seeking to defame him, 
acknowledge the truth of his miracles, and content themselves 
with ascribing them to the devil. 

What, then, are these authenticated miracles of Vintras? 
On this point we are better informed than any one, as will 
presently be seen. Official reports signed by honourable 
witnesses, artists, doctors, priests, otherwise irreproachable, 
have been communicated to us; we have examined eye 
witnesses, and, better than all, we have seen for ourselves. 
The matters deserve to be related with some detail. 

A writer who, to say the least, is eccentric, his name is M. 
Madrolle, now lives at Paris. He is an old man whose family 
and connections are reputable. He wrote formerly in the 
most exalted Catholic strain, and received the most flattering 
encouragements from ecclesiastical authority, even approba¬ 
tions emanating from the Apostolic Seat; finally, he saw 
Vintras, and drawn away by the prestige of his miracles, he 
has changed into an obstinate sectarian and an irreconcilable 
enemy of the hierarchy and priesthood. 

At the period when Eliphas Levi published his Dogme et 
Rituel de la Haute Magie, he received a broadside from M. 
Madrolle which astounded him. The author maintained 
loudly therein the most unheard of paradoxes in the confused 
style of ecstatics. According to him, life was sufficient for 
the expiation of the greatest crimes, since these were the 
result of a death sentence. The most wicked men, being the 
most unfortunate of all, appear, in his eyes, to offer God a- 
more sublime expiation. He declaimed against every check 
and every condemnation. “ A religion which condemns is a 
condemned religion! ” he cried, and subsequently preached 
the most complete licence under the pretence of charity, 
forgetting himself so far as to say that the most imperfect and 
apparently reprehensible act of love was of more value than 
the most perfect prayer. Finally, he denied the existence of 
the devil with a vehemence which was occasionally full of 
eloquence. 

“ Imagine to yourself,” said he, “ a devil tolerated by God, 
commissioned by God ! Imagine, further, a God who has 
created the devil, and permits him to fall furiously on creatures 


THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES 


455 


so weak already and so quick to deceive themselves! A God 
of the devil, in fine, seconded, anticipated, and even sur¬ 
passed by a Satanic God.” The rest of the performance was 
of similar force. The professor of magic was almost frightened, 
and obtained the address of M. Madrolle. It was not without 
some trouble that he discovered this singular pamphleteer, and 
the conversation which then took place between them was 
very nearly as follows :— 

Eliphas Levi. —“Monsieur, I have received your brochure; 
I have come to thank you for your present, and venture at the 
same time to testify to you my astonishment and regret.” 

M. Madrolle. —“Your regret, monsieur. Will you kindly 
explain yourself? I scarcely understand you.” 

“ I regret poignantly, monsieur, to see you guilty of errors 
into which I fell formerly myself, but I had, at least, the 
excuse of youth and inexperience. Your brochure misses' 
fire because it wants moderation. Your intention was, doubt¬ 
less, to protest against errors in faith and abuses in morals, 
but it turns out that it is faith itself, and morality, that 
you attack. The exaltation which overflows in your little 
work must itself do you considerable wrong, and some of 
your best friends have been reasonably anxious about your 
health.” 

“ I don’t doubt it! They have said, and still say, that I 
am mad, but it is not the first time that believers have ex¬ 
perienced the folly of the Cross. I am excited, monsieur, and 
you would be the same in my place, because it is impossible 
to be unmoved in the presence of prodigies.” 

“Ah! you speak of prodigies; this interests me. Come 
now, frankly and between ourselves, what wonders are in 
question ? ” 

“ What wonders indeed if not those of the great prophet 
Elias, returned to earth under the name of Pierre Michel! ” 

“ I see, you are speaking of Vintras; I have heard some 
account of his performances. But does he really work 
wonders ? ” 

At this M. Madrolle leaped in his chair, lifted his eyes and 
hands to heaven, and ended by smiling with a condescension 
which was akin to profound pity. 

“ Does he work wonders, monsieur ? Why, surely, the 


45 6 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


greatest, the most astounding, the most incontestable, the 
most veritable miracles performed on earth since the days of 
Jesus Christ? . . .What! Thousands of Hosts appear on 
altars where there were none ; wine sparkles in empty chalices, 
and it is no delusion, it is wine, a delicious wine; celestial 
music is heard; the fragrance of another world diffuses itself, 
and, finally, blood—true human blood which doctors have 
examined—exudes and sometimes flows copiously from the 
Hosts, leaving mysterious characters thereon. I tell you here 
what I have seen, what I have heard, what I have touched, 
what I have tasted! And you would have me keep cool in 
the face of an ecclesiastical authority which finds it easier to 
deny all than to examine the smallest thing.” 

“Allow me, monsieur; it is pre-eminently in matters of 
religion that authority can never be wrong. What is good in 
religion is the hierarchy, and what is evil is anarchy; to what, 
in fact, would sacerdotal influence be reduced if you assert as 
a principle that we must believe in the testimony of our senses 
rather than in the decisions of the Church ? Is not the 
Church more visible than all your miracles ! Those who behold 
miracles and do not see the Church are more to be pitied 
than the blind, for they have not even the resource of being 
led.” 

“Monsieur, I know all this as well as yourself, but God 
cannot contradict Himself; He will not allow sincerity to be 
deceived, and the Church herself cannot decide that I am 
blind when I have eyes. . . . Stay, here is what we read in 
the letters of John Hus, towards the end of the forty-third 
letter :— 1 A doctor told me that I should submit to the 
Council in all things, and then all would be well and legitimate 
for me. He added: If the Council said you had one eye 
though you have two, it must still be maintained that the 
Council is not wrong. I answered that if the universal world 
declared such a thing, so long as I had the use of my reason, 
I could not admit it without injuring my conscience.’ With 
John Hus I reply to you that truth and reason existed before 
any Church and Council.” 

“I must interrupt you, my dear monsieur. Formerly 
you were a Catholic; you are such no longer, and con¬ 
sciences are free. I simply submit that the institution of 


THA UMA TURGICAL EXPERIENCES 


457 


hierarchic infallibility in matters of religion is far more 
reasonable and far more incontestable than all the miracles 
in the world. Besides, what should not be done to preserve 
peace? Do you think that John Hus would not have been 
a greater man had he sacrificed one of his eyes to universal 
concord instead of inundating Europe with blood ? Oh, 
monsieur, let the Church decide when it pleases that I am 
blind of one eye! I beg but a single favour, it is to tell me 
of which one, that I may close it up henceforth, and see by 
the other only with irreproachable orthodoxy.” 

“ I confess I am not orthodox after your fashion.” 

“ I see that too well; but let us return to the prodigies! 
You have then seen, touched, smelt, and tasted! But, 
exaltation apart, will you describe me something circum¬ 
stantially and in detail, something which above all shall 
be evidently miraculous ? Am I overbold in asking this ? ” 

“Not the least in the world, but what shall I select? 
There are so many. . . . Stay! ” he added, after a moment’s 
reflection, and with a slight emotional tremor in his voice, 
“the prophet is in London and we are here. Very well; 
now if, mentally only, you should ask him to send you the 
Sacrament immediately, and if in a place chosen by yourself, 
in your own house, say, in a cloth or in a book, you should 
find a Host on your return, what would you think ? ” 

“ I should declare the fact inexplicable by common critical 
methods.” 

“ Well, sir,” cried M. Madrolle triumphantly, “ that is 
exactly what frequently happens to me! Yes, monsieur, 
when I wish it, that is, when I am prepared and trust that 
I am worthy of it, I find the Host where I ask for it; I find 
it really and palpably, though often ornamented with little 
miraculous hearts which might have been the work of 
Raphael.” 

^Eliphas Levi, who felt ill at ease during the discussion 
of facts with which a kind of profanation of the most sacred 
things was mixed up, took his leave of the former Catholic 
writer, and went away pondering on the strange influence 
of Vintras, who thus had upset this old-established faith and 
this old scholar’s understanding. 

Some days after, the Kabbalist 6liphas was aroused at 


45 ^ 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


an early hour in the morning by an unknown visitor. He 
was a white-haired man, dressed entirely in black, having 
the countenance of an extremely devout priest; in a word, 
he was of highly respectable appearance. This ecclesiastic 
was provided with a letter of introduction couched in the 
following terms :— 

“ Dear Master, 

“I present you an old scholar who would jabber 
with you the jargon of sorcery. Receive him as myself 
(that is, as I have myself received him), by getting rid of 
him as quickly as possible. 

“ Yours wholly in the sacred and saintly Kabbalah, 

“Ad. Desbarrolles.” 

“ Monsieur l’abbe,” said 6liphas, smiling as he finished 
reading, “ I am quite at your service, and can refuse nothing 
to the friend who has written to me. So you have seen my 
excellent pupil Desbarrolles ? ” 

“Yes, monsieur, and have found him a most amiable and 
erudite man. I consider yourself and him to be worthy 
of the truth recently manifested by the astounding miracles 
and undoubted revelations of the archangel St Michael.” 

“ Monsieur, you honour us. Has Desbarrolles astonished 
you by his knowledge ? ” 

“ Undoubtedly ! He possesses in no common degree the 
secrets of chiromancy; on the mere inspection of my hand 
he told me nearly all the history of my life.” 

“He is quite competent to do so; did he go into minute 
details ? ” 

“ Sufficiently minute to convince me of his extraordinary 
knowledge.” 

“ Did he say that you were formerly cure of Saint-Louis, 
in the diocese of Tours, that you are the most zealous 
follower of the ecstatic Eugene Vintras, and that your 
name is Charvoz ? ” 

This was a perfect coup de theatre; the old priest, at each 
of these questions, leaped on his chair; when he heard his 
name, he turned pale and started up as if a spring had 
been touched and impelled him. 


THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES 


459 


“You are indeed a magician,” he cried. “Charvoz is 
certainly my name, but it is not the one which I now pass 
under—I call myself La Paraz. 

; “ I know it; La Paraz is your mother’s name. You have 
left an enviable position, monsieur, that of a country cure 
with a most charming presbytery, to share the perturbed 
existence of a sectarian.” 

“ Say, rather, of a great prophet! ” 

“ Monsieur, I believe confidently in your own good faith, 
but you will permit me to examine slightly the character 
and mission of your prophet.” 

“Yes, monsieur, investigation, broad daylight, the light 
of science, are precisely what we seek. Come to London 
and see for yourself—the miracles are permanent! ” 

“ Monsieur, will you first give me some scrupulously 
exact details concerning these miracles ? ” 

“ As many as you please.” And thereupon the old priest 
began to narrate things which everyone would have considered 
impossible, but were in no way astonishing to the professor 
of transcendent magic. For instance, one day, in a paroxysm 
of enthusiasm, Vintras was preaching before his heterodox 
altar, twenty-five persons being present at his discourse. 
There was an empty chalice on the altar, one well known 
to the Abbe Charvoz, for he had brought it from his church 
at Mont Louis, and was absolutely certain that the sacred 
vessel had neither secret conduit nor double bottom. 

“ To prove,” said Vintras, “ that God Himself inspires 
me, He has revealed to me that the chalice is about to fill 
with drops of blood under the semblance of wine, that all 
of you may taste the juice of the wine of futurity, that wine 
which we shall drink with the Saviour in the kingdom of 
His Father.” 

“ Seized with astonishment and fear,” said the Abbd 
Charvoz, “ I went up to the altar, took the chalice, looked 
into it, and found it quite empty. I turned it upside down 
before all, then descended to kneel at the foot of the altar, 
holding the chalice in my two hands. Suddenly, a slight 
noise, like a drop of water falling from the ceiling into the 
chalice, was distinctly audible, and a drop of wine appeared 
at the bottom of the cup. All eyes were turned towards 


460 THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


me, and then to the ceiling, for our simple gathering was 
held in a poor room; the ceiling had neither break nor 
fissure, nothing was seen to fall, and, nevertheless, the 
sound of the drops as they descended increased in rapidity, 
while the wine rose towards the brim. When full, I passed 
it slowly under the eyes of all present, then the prophet 
moistened his lips, and all, one after another, tasted the 
miraculous wine. No recollection of earthly delicious savour 
would impart any idea of it. . . . And then what shall I 
tell you of the blood-prodigies, which daily astonish us ? 
Thousands of bleeding hosts fall on our altars. The sacred 
stigmata are manifested to those who desire it. Hosts, which 
at first were white, are slowly imprinted with characters and 
bleeding hearts. Must we believe that God would abandon 
the holiest of things to the wonder-working of the demon ? 
Must we not rather adore and confess that the hour of the 
supreme and final revelation has arrived ? ” 

(While thus speaking, the Abbe Charvoz had the same 
kind of nervous tremor in his voice which Eliphas Levi 
had already noticed in M. Madrolle. The magician bent 
his head thoughtfully, then all at once—“ Monsieur,” he 
said to the Abbe, “ you have one or two of these miraculous 
hosts about you—be good enough to show me them ! ” 

“ Monsieur! ” 

“I am convinced that you have; why attempt to deny 
it?” 

“I do not deny it,” said the Abbe Charvoz, “but you 
will excuse me from exposing to the investigations of 
incredulity the objects of the most sincere and exalted 
faith.” 

“ Monsieur Charvoz,” said Eliphas gravely, “ incredulity 
is the distrust of an ignorance almost certain to deceive 
itself. Science is not incredulous. In the first place, I 
believe in your conviction, since you have embraced a life 
of privation and even of reprobation for your unhappy 
opinion. Show me, therefore, your miraculous hosts, and 
be assured of my respect for the objects of a sincere 
adoration.” 

“Well,” said the Abbe Charvoz, after some further demur, 
“ I will do so,” and unbuttoning the top of his black waist- 


THA UMA TURGICAL EXPERIENCES 46 1 


coat he took out a small silver reliquary, before which he 
knelt down with tears in his eyes and prayers on his lips. 
Eliphas knelt beside him, and the Abbe opened the reliquary, 
which contained three hosts, one whole, the others almost in 
a paste, and as if kneaded with blood. The perfect host 
bore upon each side a heart in relief on the centre—a clot of 
blood in the shape of a heart, which seemed formed within 
the host itself in an inexplicable manner. The blood could 
not have been applied from without, for the colouring by 
imbibition had left white the particles which adhered to the 
outer surface. The phenomenon had the same character¬ 
istics on both sides. The professor of magic was seized with 
involuntary trembling, which did not pass unnoticed by the 
old priest, who, having again venerated and locked his 
reliquary, took out an album from his pocket and silently 
placed it in the hands of Eliphas. It contained copies of all 
the bleeding characters which had been seen on the hosts 
from the beginning of the miracles and ecstacies of Vintras. 
There were hearts of all kinds, emblems of all sorts, but 
three above all excited the curiosity of Eliphas to the highest 
point. 

“Monsieur l’Abbe,” said he to Charvoz, “do you know 
these three signs ? ” 

“ No,” answered the Abbe, frankly; “ but the prophet 
assures us that they are of palmary importance, and that 
their secret significance is soon to be made known—that is, 
at the end of time.” 

“Well, monsieur,” said the Professor of magic, solemnly, 
“ even before the end of time I will explain them to you; 
these three Kabbalistic signs are the devil’s signature ! ” 

“ Impossible ! ” cried the old priest. 

“ It is true,” replied Eliphas, with emphasis. 

The signs were as follows :—1. The star of the microcosm, 
or the magic Pentagram, that star wherein the human figure 
was represented by Agrippa, with the head in the ascending 
point and the four members in the four other points—the 
Burning Star which, when inverted, is the hieroglyphic sign 
of the goat of black magic, whose head can then be sketched 
in the star with the two horns above, the ears on the right 
and left, and the beard below, sign of antagonism and blind 


462 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


fatality, the goat of lewdness assaulting heaven with its horns, 
a sign execrated even in the Sabbath by initiates of a superior 
order. 2. The two Hermetic serpents, but the heads and 
tails, instead of converging in two parallel semicircles, 
diverged, and there was no intermediate line representing the 
caduceus. Above the serpents’ heads was the ominous V, 
the typhonian fork, the character of hell. On the right and 
left were the sacred numbers III. and VII. relegated to the 
horizontal line which, represents passive and secondary things. 
This, therefore, was the significance of the character:— 
Antagonism is eternal; 'God is the strife of blind causes 
which perpetually create by destroying; the things of religion 
are passive and passing, boldness makes use of them, war 
profits by them, and discord is perpetuated by both. 3. 
Lastly, the Kabbalistic monogram of Jehovah, the Jod and 
He, but reversed, which forms, according to the doctors of 
occult science, the most frightful of blasphemies, meaning, in 
whatever way it may be read:—‘ Fatality alone exists, God 
and spirit do not exist. Matter is the grand totality, spirit 
the dream of demented matter. The form is more than the 
idea, the woman more than the man, pleasure more than 
thought, vice more than virtue, the multitude greater than its 
chiefs, children above their fathers, and madness more than 
reason.’ ” 

This is what was hieroglyphically written in characters of 
blood on the pseudo-miraculous hosts of Vintras ! We 
declare on our honour that all the facts above stated are such 
as we have described them, and that we ourselves have 
explained the characters according to true magical science 
and the true Kabbalistic keys. 

The disciple of Vintras also imparted to us the descrip¬ 
tion of the pontifical vestments given, said he, by Jesus 
Christ Himself to the pretended prophet in one of his 
ecstatic sleeps. Vintras caused the vestments to be made, 
and clothes himself in them to perform his miracles. Their 
colour is red; he wears on his forehead the cross in the 
form of a lingam, and has a pastoral crook, surmounted by a 
hand of which all the fingers are shut save the thumb and 
index. Now, all this is diabolical in the highest degree, and 
is not this intuition of the symbols of a lost science some- 


THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES 463 

thing truly marvellous, for it is transcendent magic which, 
basing the universe on the two pillars of Hermes and 
Solomon, has divided the metaphysical world into two 
intellectual zones, one white and luminous, comprising 
positive ideas, the other black and opaque, including those 
which are negative, and has given to the synthetic notion of 
the first the name of God, and to the synthesis of the second 
the name of the devil, or Satan. The sign of the lingam 
borne on the forehead is, in India, the distinctive mark of 
the worshippers of Seeva, the destroyer ; for this sign being 
that of the Great Magic Arcanum, which is connected with the 
mystery of universal generation, to carry it on the forehead 
is to make a profession of doctrinal immodesty. 1 Now, say 
the Orientalists, on the day when modesty shall have ceased 
in the world, the world, abandoned to debauchery, which 
is barren, will soon come to an end for want of mothers. 
Modesty is the acceptation of maternity. The hand with 
three fingers closed expresses the negation of the triad and 
the assertion of purely material forces. A hand showing only 
the auricular is equivalent, in the sacred, symbolical language, 
to the exclusive affirmation of passion and savoir-faire. It is 
the scurrilous and materialistic version of the great words of 
St Augustine—“Love, and then do what you will.” Now, 
compare this sign with M. Madrolle’s doctrine :—“The most 
imperfect and apparently most culpable act of love is of 
greater value than the best of prayers.” If it be asked, what 
is that force which independently of human will, and more or 
less of human knowledge (for Yintras is an illiterate and 
uneducated man), formulates its doctrines by means of signs 
buried in the ruins of the ancient world, which unearths the 
mysteries of Thebes and Eleusis, and writes the most 
cultured of Indian reveries in the most secret Hermetic 
alphabet, we answer that these wonders are reproduced by 
magnetic intuition of the fluidic thought-pictures in the 
universal vital fluid. 


1 See Note 58. 


464 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


III.— The Magician and the Sorcerer—Secret History 
of the Assassination of the Archbishop of 
Paris. 

An artisan called one day on Eliphas Levi. He was a 
man of some fifty years old, of impressive appearance, 
straightforward and rational in speech. Questioned on the 
object of his visit, he answered, “ You should know well 
enough; I come to beg and entreat of you to return me 
what I Have lost.” 

It must be owned in all sincerity that Eliphas Levi knew 
nothing of his visitor, nor of the object he was in search of, 
so he answered: “You suppose me a greater sorcerer than 
I am; I know not who you are nor what you seek, so if you 
think I can serve you, you must explain and define your 
request.” 

“ Well, since you refuse to understand me, you will at 
least recognise this,” said the unknown, taking from his 
pocket a little black, well-thumbed book. It was the 
Grimoire of Honorius, which consists of an apocryphal 
constitution of Honorius II. for the evocation and control 
of spirits, plus some superstitious recipes. This work was 
the manual of the wicked priests who practised black magic 
during the darkest periods of the Middle Ages. Sanguinary 
rites, mixed with profanations of the Mass and the con¬ 
secrated elements, formulae for bewitchment and witchcraft, 
finally, practices which idiocy alone could permit and 
knavery counsel, are to be found therein. For the rest, the 
work is complete of its kind, and, being consequently scarce 
at the booksellers, is run up by amateurs to a high price at 
public auctions. 

“Dear monsieur,” said the workman, sighing, “from the 
age of ten years I have not once neglected to perform my 
office. This book never leaves my person, and I conform 
rigorously to all the prescriptions it contains. Why, then, 
have those who came to me deserted me? Eli, Eli, 
Lamma-” 

“ Stop ! ” cried Eliphas. “ Do not caricature the most 
formidable words which agony ever caused to be uttered 



THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES 465 


in the world. Who are the beings that come to you by 
the virtue of this horrible book ? Do you know them ? 
Have you promised them anything ? Have you signed any 
compact? ’ 

“ No,” interrupted the owner of the Grimoire, “ I do not 
know them, and have entered into no bond with them; I 
know only that their leaders are good, the intermediaries 
alternately good and evil, the inferiors evil, but not blindly 
so, nor without the possibility of growing better. He whom 
I have evoked, he who has so often appeared to me, belongs 
to the most exalted hierarchy, for he is of comely aspect, is 
well clad, and has always given me favourable answers. But 
I have lost the first page of my Grimoire, the most important, 
that which bears the autographic signature of the master 
spirit, and since then he has no longer appeared to me when 
I call him. I am a lost man, I am bereft like Job, I have no 
longer strength or courage. Oh, master, I conjure you,— 
you who have only a word to say, but a single sign to make, 
and the spirits will obey,—take pity on me, and recover for 
me what I have lost ! h 

“ Lend me your Grimoire,” said Eliphas. “ What name 
do you give the spirit which appears to you ? ” 

“ I call him Adonai.” 

“ And in what language was his signature ? ” 

“ I do not know, but I suppose it was in Hebrew.” 

“ Hold,” said the professor of transcendental magic, tracing 
two Hebrew words at the beginning and end of the book, 
“ here are two signatures that spirits of darkness will never 
counterfeit. Go in peace, sleep well, and evoke no more 
phantoms ! ” 

The workman departed, and eight days after he returned 
to the scientist. 

“ You have restored hope and life to me,” he said; “ my 
strength has partially returned; by the signatures which you 
gave me, I can soothe those who are in pain and liberate the 
obsessed, but him , him I cannot see, and until I behold him 
I shall be sad unto death. Formerly, he was always near me; 
sometimes he touched me in the night and woke me to tell 
me everything I wished to know. Master, I entreat you, 
grant that I shall see him again ! ” 


4 66 THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


“Whom?” 

“ Adonai.” 

“ Do you know who Adonai is ? ” 

“ No; but I wish to behold him once more.” 

“Adonai is invisible.” 

“ I have seen him.” 

“He is without form.” 

“ I have touched him.” 

“ He is infinite.” 

“ He is pretty much about my own height.” 

“ The prophets tell us that the hem of his vestment sweeps 
away the stars of the morning.” 

“ He has a very neat surcoat and the whitest linen.” 

“ Holy Scripture, moreover, says that none can behold him 
without dying.” 

“ He has a benevolent and jovial countenance.” 

“ But how do you proceed to obtain these apparitions ? ” 

“ I perform all that is appointed in the great Grimoire.” 

“What! even the bloody sacrifice? ” 

“ Certainly.” 

“ Wretch ! But what is the victim ? ” 

At this question the artisan started slightly; he grew pale, 
and his look was disconcerted. 

“ Master, you know better than I do what it is,” he said 
humbly, and in a low voice. “ Oh, it cost me a hard struggle, 
above all the first time, to cut with one blow of the magic 
knife the throat of the innocent creature! One night I had 
just ended the mournful rites, I was seated within the circle 
on the inner threshold of my door, and the conflagration of 
the victim was being finished in a large fire of alder and 
cypress-wood. Suddenly, close at hand I again saw it, 
or rather felt it pass; a heart-rending cry rang in my 
ears, and from that moment I seem to be hearing it 
always.” 

6liphas rose and looked fixedly at his interlocutor. Was 
there a dangerous madman, capable of renewing the atrocities 
of the Seigneur de Retz, before him ? The appearance of this 
person was, however, gentle and honest. No, it was not 
possible ! 

“ But come now, this victim, say plainly what it is! You 


THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES 467 


suppose that I know it already, and perhaps I do, but I have 
my reasons for wishing you to tell me.” 

# “According to the magic ritual, it is a kid of a year old, 
virginal and unblemished.” 

“A real kid ?” 

“ Certainly. Rest assured that it was neither a plaything 
nor a straw-stuffed dummy ! ” 

^liphas breathed freely. 

“ Come ! ” thought he, “ this man is not a sorcerer worthy 
of the stake. He knows not that when the abominable 
authors of the Grimoires speak of a virgin kid, they mean 
a young child.” “ Well,” he continued, turning to his client, 
“give me the details of your visions; what you have related 
interests me in the highest degree.” 

The sorcerer, for he may well be called by this name, then 
recounted a series of strange facts, of which two families had 
been witnesses, which further were perfectly identical with 
those of the medium Home—hands issuing from walls, motions 
of furniture, phosphorescent apparitions, &c. One day, the 
rash novice in magic dared to call Astaroth, and beheld the 
apparition of a gigantic monster, with the body of a hog and 
the head taken from the skeleton of a colossal ox. All this 
was told with a truthful accent, with a certitude of having 
actually seen, which excluded any suspicion of the good faith 
and complete conviction of the narrator. £liphas, as an 
aesthete in magic, was delighted at this lucky find. A true 
mediaeval sorcerer, a sincere, undoubted sorcerer, in the nine¬ 
teenth century ! A sorcerer who had beheld Satan, under the 
name of Adonai, dressed like a citizen; and Astaroth under - 
his true, diabolical form ! What an artistic object, what an 
archaeological treasure! 

“ My friend,” he said to his new pupil, “ I am inclined to 
assist you in recovering what you have lost. Take my book, 
conform to the prescriptions in the Ritual, and come to see 
me again in eight days’ time.” 

On the date appointed, a fresh conversation took place, and 
then the artisan declared that he was the inventor of a life¬ 
saving machine of great naval importance; one thing only 
was amiss in it, it would not work; there was an imperceptible 
defect in the movement. What this defect was the demon of 


4 68 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


perversity alone could reveal, and it was absolutely necessary 
to invoke him. 

“Beware!” said Eliphas Levi. “Try this Kabbalistic 
invocation instead for nine days,” and he gave him a leaf in 
manuscript. “Begin this evening, and to-morrow let me 
know what you have seen, for to-night you will have a 
manifestation.” 

The next day our individual did not fail to appear. 

“ I was awakened suddenly, towards one in the morning,” 
said he. “I saw a great light at the foot of my bed, and in 
this light a phantom arm , making passes in front of me, as if 
to magnetize me. Then I again fell asleep, and a little time 
after, being woke up a second time, I saw the same light, but 
it had changed its place. It had passed from left to right, 
and in its luminous depth I distinguished the semblance of a 
man, who was looking at me with folded arms.” 

“ What was he like ? ” 

“ Much of your size and appearance.” 

“ ’Tis well! Go and continue doing what I prescribed.” 

Nine days elapsed and then came a new visit from the 
adept, who this time was all radiance and animation. The 
moment he saw Eliphas, “ Thanks, master! ” he cried, “ the 
machine works—some unknown persons have provided me 
with the necessary funds for the completion of my enterprise. 
I have regained peace and sleep—all thanks to your power ! ” 

“ Say rather, thanks to your own faith and docility. And 

now, farewell, I must study.What now? Why do 

you assume that supplicating air ? What more do you 
want ? ” 

“ Oh ! if you would only-” 

“Well, what? Have you not had all and more than you 
wanted, and there has been no question of remuneration ? ” 

“ Yes, truly,” said the other, sighing; “ but I long to see 
him again.” 

“ Incorrigible ! ” exclaimed Eliphas. 

Some weeks after, the professor of transcendent magic was 
roused about two in the morning by a severe pain in the head. 
For several moments he anticipated congestion of the brain ; 
but he rose, lit his lamp, opened the window, walked up and 
down in his study, then, soothed by the fresh morning air, 



THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES 469 


returned to bed, where he slept profoundly. Subsequently, 
he had a nightmare; he saw with terrific realism the ox¬ 
headed giant of the artisan-mechanist. This monster pur¬ 
sued and attacked him. When he awoke it was^ broad day¬ 
light, and some one was knocking at the door. Eliphas rose, 
threw a garment round him, and opened it. There was the 
workman ! 

“ Master,” said the latter, entering hastily, and with an 
alarmed aspect, “ how are you ? ” 

“ Excellently well,” answered Eliphas. 

“ But were you in no danger to-night about two o’clock ? ” 

Eliphas was not under cross-examination, and no longer 
remembered his indisposition. 

“ In danger ? ” he repeated. “ In none that I know of.” 

“ Were you not attacked by a monstrous phantom, which 
tried to strangle you ? Did you experience nothing ? ” 

Eliphas recollected. 

“ Yes,” said he, “ I had truly an incipient apoplexy and a 
horrible dream. But how did you know of it?” 

“ At the same hour an invisible hand struck me roughly on 
the shoulder and woke me with a start. I then dreamed that 
I saw you in the clutches of Astaroth. I sat up in bed, and 
a voice cried in my ear, ‘ Get up and hasten to your master’s 
help, he is in danger ! ’ I rose hurriedly, but where should I 
run to first? What danger menaced you? The voice had 
told me nothing on these points. I determined, therefore, to 
wait till sunrise* and as soon as it was daylight I hastened to 
you, and here I am.” 

“ Thank you, my friend,” said the Magus, offering his hand. 
“Astaroth is a vicious jester, but I had merely a slight deter¬ 
mination of blood to the head, and now I am perfectly well. 
You may be quite reassured and go back to your work.” 

Strange as the facts may be which have just been narrated, 
a still more extraordinary, and this time tragical, drama 
remains to be revealed. It is connected with the sanguinary 
event which, at the beginning of this year, plunged Paris and 
all Christendom in sorrow and stupefaction, an occurrence 
which no one suspected had black magic mixed up with it. 

During the winter, at the beginning of last year, a bookseller 
informed the author of the Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie 


470 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


that an ecclesiastic had been inquiring for his address, and 
manifested a strong desire to see him. 6liphas Levi did not 
feel himself inspired with such immediate confidence towards 
this stranger as to expose himself without precautions to his 
visits; he named a friend’s house where he would be present 
with his faithful pupil Desbarrolles. On the appointed day 

he repaired to Madame A-’s, and found the ecclesiastic, 

who had already been awaiting him several minutes. He was 
a young, somewhat emaciated man, with a prominent pointed 
nose and dull blue eyes. His bony and projecting forehead 
had a breadth disproportioned to its height; his head was 
elongated behind, his smooth and short hair, parted at the 
side, was of grizzly flaxen, approaching light chestnut, but 
with a queer disagreeable tint about it. His mouth was 
sensual and combative; his manner, however, was affable, his 
voice gentle, and his utterance occasionally a little embarrassed. 
Questioned by Eliphas Levi on the object of his visit, he 
answered that he was in search of the Grimoire of Honorius, 
and he desired information from the professor of occult 
science on the best way to procure the little book, now 
scarcely to be met with. 

“ I would give fully a hundred francs for a copy of this 
Grimoire,” said he. 

“ The work in itself is worthless,” answered Eliphas. “ It 
is a pseudo-constitution of Honorius II. that you may have 
seen quoted by some learned collector of apocryphal con¬ 
stitutions.” 

“ Not exactly, but I wish to fulfil a fancy; I have something 
to perform.” 

“ I trust that something is not an evocation of black magic; 
you know, as I do, monsieur l’Abbe, that the Church has 
always condemned, and still condemns severely, everything 
connected with those forbidden practices.” 

A slight smile, mingled with a kind of sarcastic irony, was 
the sole response of the abbe, and the conversation fell. The 
chiromancist Desbarrolles was, however, examining the priest’s 
hand attentively; the latter perceived it, a natural explana¬ 
tion ensued, and the abbe cheerfully offered his hand to the 
experimentalist. Desbarrolles knitted his brows and seemed 
embarrassed. The hand was damp and cold ; the fingers 



THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES 


47i 


were smooth and spatulated ; the mountain of Venus, or that 
part of the palm v/hich is connected with the thumb, was of 
unusual development, the line of life was short and broken ; 
there were crosses in the centre of the hand and stars on the 
mountain of the moon. 

“Monsieur l’Abbe,” said Desbarrolles, “if you have not 
received solid religious instruction, you may easily become 
a dangerous sectarian, for you are drawn on the one hand 
towards the most exalted mysticism, and on the other to the 
most concentrated obstinacy and incommunicativeness in the 
world. You investigate much but imagine more, and as you 
confide your fancies to no one, they may well attain propor¬ 
tions which will make them your real enemies. Your habits 
are contemplative and a little indolent, but it is an indolence 
which once aroused is perhaps to be dreaded. You are 
impelled towards a passion which your calling .... but, 
your pardon, monsieur l’Abbe, I think I have passed the 
limits of discretion. 

“Say all, monsieur, I can hear, and wish to know, everything.” 

“ Well, if, as I do not doubt, you turn to the profit of 
charity all the restless activity which is caused you by the 
desires of the heart, you must be blessed very often for your 
good works.” 

The abbe gave once more that doubtful and ominous 
smile, which lent his pale face such a singular expression. 
He rose and took leave, without telling his name, and with¬ 
out it occurring to any one to ask it. £liphas and Des¬ 
barrolles conducted him to the staircase out of respect for his 
priestly dignity. Near the head of the stairs he turned and 

said slowly, “ Before long you will hear of something. 

You will hear me spoken of,” he added, emphasizing each 
word. Then he bowed, waved his hand, and, turning without 
another word, descended the staircase. The two friends 
returned to Madame A-. 

“ There goes a most extraordinary person,” said Eliphas. 
“ What he uttered at parting seemed very like a menace.” 

“You intimidated him,” said Madame A——. “Before 
you arrived he was beginning to speak out plainly, but you 
talked of conscience and the commandments of the Church, 
till he no longer dared to confess what he wanted.” 





472 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


“ Pshaw ! What did he want then ? ” 

“To see the devil.” 

“ Did he think I carried him in my pocket ? ” 

“ No, but he is aware you give lessons in the Kabbalah 
and magic, and hoped you would help him in his enterprises. 
He informed my daughter and myself, that, in his country 
presbytery, he had already performed an evocation one 
evening by the help of a common Grimoire. He told us that 
a sudden gust of wind seemed to shake the building, the 
rafters groaned, timbers creaked, doors trembled, windows 
were flung open with great noise, and hissing sounds were 
heard in every corner of the house. He awaited the formid¬ 
able vision, but saw nothing ; no monster presented itself; in 
a word, the devil refused to appear, and this is the reason 
that he is in search of the Grimoire of Honorius, where he 
hopes to find more powerful conjurations and efficacious 
rites.” 

“ But this man must be a monster or a madman.” 

“ He may be madly in love,” said Desbarrolles. “ He is 
tormented by some passion, and absolutely looks for nothing 
less than that the devil should take interest in it.’’ 

“ But then how shall we hear him talked about ? v 
“Who knows? Perhaps he has planned the abduction of 
the Queen of England or the Sultana ? ” 

Here the conversation ended, and an entire year elapsed 
without any intelligence concerning the strange young priest. 
On the night between the first and second of January 1857, 
Eliphas Levi was awakened with a start of agitation conse¬ 
quent on a bizarre and ominous dream. He seemed to be in 
a dilapidated Gothic room, very like the deserted chapel of 
an old castle. A door concealed by black drapery opened 
out of this chamber; behind the drapery the ruddy light of 
candles could be just distinguished, and it appeared to 
Eliphas that, prompted by a curiosity which was full of 
terror, he approached the black drapery, which parted there¬ 
upon, and an outstretched hand seized his arm. He beheld 
no one, but heard a low voice saying in his ear:—“ Come 
and see thy father, who is about to die ! ” 

The Magus woke with palpitating heart and brow bathed 
in perspiration. “ What does this dream signify ? ” thought 


THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES 


473 


he. “ My father is long since dead—why tell me that he is 
about to die ? ” The following night the same dream came 
to him, with the same circumstances, and Eliphas Levi again 
woke up, hearing those words in his ear:—“ Come and see 
thy father, who is about to die ! ” 

A This repetition of the nightmare painfully impressed 
Eliphas. He had accepted an invitation to dine, on the 
third of January, in some cheerful society, but he now wrote 
to excuse himself, finding that he was ill-disposed for the 
gaiety of an artist’s banquet. He remained therefore in his 
study; the weather was cloudy; at noon he received a visit 

from one of his pupils in magic, M. le Vicomte de M-. 

The rain was then falling in such torrents that Eliphas offered 
the Vicomte his umbrella, which the latter would not accept. 
A courteous little dispute followed, which ended by Eliphas 
walking back with his pupil. Out of doors the rain stopped, 
the Vicomte found a coach, and Eliphas, instead of returning 
home, crossed the Luxembourg mechanically, issued by the 
gate which opens on the Rue d’Enfer, and found himself in 
front of the Pantheon. A double line of barriers improvised 
for the novena of Saint Genevieve, indicated for pilgrims the 
way towards St Etienne-du-mont. Eliphas, whose heart was 
saddened, and, therefore, disposed to prayer, followed this 
path and entered the Church. It might then have been four 
in the afternoon. The church was filled with the faithful, 
and the daily office was performed with great recollection 
and unusual solemnity. The banners belonging to the 
churches of the city and the suburbs bore witness to the 
public devotion towards the virgin who had saved Paris 
from famine and invasion. At the bottom of the church the 
tomb of St Genevieve was ablaze with lights. Litanies were 
chanted, and the procession issued from the choir. 

After the cross-bearer, accompanied by his acolytes and 
followed by the choir-boys, came the banner of St Genevieve, 
and the Genevevan nuns in double file, clothed in black, 
with white veils on their heads, blue ribbbons with the medal 
of the legend round their necks, and a taper in their hands, 
surmounted by a little Gothic lantern, as tradition gives to the 
images of the saint. After the nuns of St Genevieve came 
the clergy, and finally the venerable Archbishop of Paris in a 


474 


THE MYSTERIES OE MAGIC 


white mitre, and wearing a cope which on either side was held 
back by his two vicars-general. The prelate, leaning on his 
pastoral staff, proceeded slowly, and to the right and left he 
blessed the crowd, which knelt down as he passed. Eliphas 
saw the Archbishop for the first time, and remarked that his 
features expressed goodness and mildness, but a look of great 
fatigue, and even a painfully concealed nervous suffering, 
were noticeable. The procession passed to the end of the 
church, traversing the nave; it returned by the aisle to the 
left of the porch, and made a pause at the tomb of St 
Genevieve, then it went back by the right aisle, continuing 
the chant of the Litany. A crowd of the faithful followed the 
procession, walking immediately behind the Archbishop. 
Quite pensive and affected by the pious solemnity, Eliphas 
mingled with this group, so as to pass more easily through 
the mass, which was closing up, and to regain the door of the 
church. The head of the procession had already returned 
into the choir, the Archbishop had reached the railing of the 
nave, where the passage was too narrow for three persons to 
walk abreast; the Archbishop was, therefore, in front and his 
two vicars-general were behind him, still holding the corners 
of his cope, which was thus open and drawn back, so that 
the prelate exhibited his breast protected only by the cross- 
ornamented embroideries of his stole. 

It was then that those who were behind the Archbishop 
perceived him stagger, and an exclamation was heard, made 
in a loud voice, but without noisy clamour. What was 
uttered ? It seemed to be—“ Down with the goddesses ! ” 
but this was considered a mistake, so much did the words 
seem misplaced and senseless. The exclamation was never¬ 
theless repeated two or three times, and some one cried, 
“Save the Archbishop! ” while others vociferated, “To 
arms ! ” The crowd thereupon receded, overturning chairs 
and barriers and hurrying towards the door. There were 
shrieks from children, clamours of women, and Eliphas, 
borne along by the crowd, was in a way carried out of the 
church, but the last glance he was able to cast therein fell on 
an awful and ineffaceable tableaux. 

In the middle of a circle, increased by the terror of all who 
surrounded him, the prelate was standing alone, still supported 


THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES, 


475 


by his crozier and sustained by the stiffness of the cope which 
his vicars-general had dropped, so that it now hung down to 
the ground. The archbishop’s head was slightly turned, his 
eyes, and disengaged hand, were raised towards Heaven; 
there was all the epic of the martyr in his mien ; it was a sub¬ 
mission and a holocaust, a prayer for his people and pardon 
for his murderer. The day was waning and the church had 
begun to darken ; the archbishop, with his uplifted arms, 
illuminated by a last sunbeam which stole across the nave, 
stood out in relief against a black background, wherein could 
be dimly distinguished a pedestal without a statue, on which 
was inscribed these two words of the Passion of Christ, Ecce 
homo , and further still into the gloom an apocalyptic painting, 
representing the four last plagues about to be let loose on the 
world, and the whirlwinds of the abyss following the dusty 
train of the wan horse of death. 

In front of the Archbishop an upraised arm, sketched in 
shadow like an infernal silhouette, was clutching and 
brandishing a knife, while, through all the uproar at the 
bottom of the church, the chant in the choir continued,, as 
the harmony of the heavenly spheres is prolonged for ever 
regardless of our revolutions and anguish. 

6 liphas Levi had been borne outside by the crowd, and had 
issued by the right door. At almost the same moment, the 
left opened violently, and an infuriated crowd poured out of 
the church, seething round a single man, who was held by 
fifty hands, while a hundred more strove to buffet him. This 
individual, later on, complained of maltreatment at the hands 
of the police, but as soon as they could distinguish him in the 
tumult, they protected him against the rage of the mob. 

Women followed him, crying “ Kill him ! ” 

“ But what has he done?” was asked by other voices. 

“ The wretch ! He has stabbed the Archbishop,” answered 
the women. Other people, however, coming out of the 
church, contradictory statements multiplied. 

“ The Archbishop has been terrified and is ill,” said some. 

“ He is dead,” others declared. 

“ Did you see the knife ? ” asked a new speaker. “ It is 
as large as a sword, and the blood streamed from the 
blade.” 


476 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


“ Our poor monseigneur has lost one of his shoes ! ” 
ejaculated an old woman, clasping her hands. 

“ It is nothing, nothing at all,” said a pew-opener there¬ 
upon. “You may go back into the church—monseigneur 
is not wounded, they are about to enthrone him.” 

At this the crowd made a motion to re-enter the church. 

“ Keep back! keep back! ” uttered the solemn and 
mournful voice of a priest at the same moment. “ The 
service cannot continue, the church is being closed, it has 
been profaned! ” 

“ How is the Archbishop ? ” asked a man. 

“ Monsieur,” answered the priest, “ the Archbishop is 
dying, and perhaps even while I am speaking he may be 
dead.” 

The crowd dispersed in consternation to spread this 
disastrous news through all Paris. A bizarre circumstance 
took place in the case of 6liphas, and caused a certain dis¬ 
traction from his profound sorrow at what had taken place. 
In the midst of the tumult, an elderly lady of exceedingly 
respectable appearance took hold of his arm and claimed 
his protection. It was his duty to respond to this appeal, 
and when they were out of the crowd, she said : “ How 
fortunate I am to have met with a man who laments this 
great crime, which so many wretches rejoice over at this 
moment! ” 

“ What say you, madam ? How can any creature exist 
who is depraved enough to exult over such a calamity ? ” 

“Silence!” the old lady enjoined, “perchance we are 
overheard. Yes,” she continued, lowering her voice, “there 
are some who are delighted at this event; there was a 
sinister-looking man saying to the crowd, when interro¬ 
gated as to what had taken place: ‘ Oh ! it is nothing. A 
spider has fallen.’ ” 

“ No, madam; you misunderstood. The crowd would 
never have endured such an abominable remark ; the man 
would have been immediately arrested.” 

“Would to God that every one thought like you!” said 
the lady; then she added, “ I commend myself to the 
charity of your prayers, for I see plainly that you are a 
godly man.” 


THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES 


477 


“That is not perhaps the verdict of the world at large,” 
answered Eliphas. 

“ And what does the world signify to us ? ” asked the 
lady with animation. “ It is lying, calumnious, impious! 
Perhaps it speaks ill of you, and I am not surprised; if you 
knew what it said of me, you would understand very well 
why I despise its opinion.” 

“ Does the world speak evil of you, madam ? ” 

“ The worst evil that can possibly be conceived.” 

“ What is that?” 

“ It accuses me of sacrilege.” 

“You alarm me ! And of what sacrilege, if you please ? ” 

“ Of a guilty farce which I am supposed to have played 
to deceive two children on Mount Salette.” 

“ What! are you-? ” 

“ I am Mademoiselle de la Merlikre.” 

“ I have heard your law-suit spoken of, mademoiselle, 
and the scandal which it occasioned, but it seems to me that 
your age and respectability should have set you above the 
reach of such an accusation.” 

“ Come and see me, monsieur, and I will introduce you 
to my solicitor, M. Favre, a man of talent whom I am seek¬ 
ing to turn to God.” 

Thus conversing, the two speakers reached the Rue du 
Vieux-Colombier. The lady thanked her temporary escort, 
and renewed the invitation to visit her. 

“I will endeavour to do so,” said Eliphas, “and if I 
come I shall ask at the door for Mademoiselle de la 
Merliere.” 

“ Be sure that you don’t ; I am not known by that name 
—ask for Madam Dutruck.” 

“ Dutruck, so be it, madam! I humbly present you my 
respects,” and they separated. 

The trial of the assassin began, and Eliphas, reading in 
the newspapers that the accused was a priest, that he was 
of the society of St Germain l’Auxerroie, that he had been 
a country cure, and that he seemed excited to the pitch of 
insanity, recollected the pallid priest who, a year before, 
had been in search of the Grimoire of Honorius. But the 
description of the criminal given in the public prints con- 


478 


THE MYSTERIES OE MAGIC 


tradicted the suspicion of the magical professor, for most of 
them gave him black hair. “It is not he, then,” thought 
Eliphas, “ but there still rings in my ear, notwithstanding, 
the speech which this atrocious crime would now explain, 

‘ You will not fail to learn something before long, and to 
hear me spoken of.’ ” 

The trial took place with all the frightful circumstances 
universally known, and the accused was condemned to death. 
The next morning Eliphas read in a legal print the descrip¬ 
tion of this scene unheard of in the annals of justice, and 
a mist passed over his eyes when he saw in the description 
of the criminal, “ He is fair.” 

“ It must be he,” said the professor of magic. 

A few days afterwards some one present at the trial had 
contrived to sketch the profile of the accused, and shewed 
it to Eliphas. 

“ Let me copy this design,” said the latter, quite palpitat¬ 
ing with terror. 

He did so, and took it to his friend, Desbarrolles, 
asking, without previous explanation, “ Do you know this 
face?” 

“ Yes,” answered Desbarrolles, with animation, “ it is that 

of the mysterious priest whom we saw at Madam A-’s, 

who wished to perform magical evocations.” 

“ Well, my friend, you confirm me in my sad conviction. 
That man whom we then saw we shall never more see; the 
hand you examined has been imbrued in blood. We have 
indeed heard him talked of as he asserted, for do you know 
the name of this pale priest ? ” 

“ Oh, my God ! ” cried Desbarrolles, changing colour, “ I 
fear that I do.” 

“ It is true—he is the miserable Louis Verger.” 

Some weeks after, Eliphas Levi was chatting with a book¬ 
seller whose speciality was old works on the occult sciences. 
The subject was the Grimoire of Honorius. 

“ It is seldom to be met with now,” said the bookseller; 
“ the last copy in my possession I disposed of to a young 
priest who offered me a hundred francs for it.” 

“ A young priest! Can you recall his appearance ? ” 

“ Perfectly ! But you must know it yourself, for he told 



THAUMATURGICAL EXPERIENCES 479 

me he had seen you, and indeed it was I who referred him 
to you.” 

Thus beyond doubt, the unhappy priest had obtained 
the fatal Grimoire, and had prepared himself for murder 
by a succession of sacrileges. The wretched man felt 
certain he would not die; • he believed that the emperor 
would be forced to pardon him; some honourable exile 
awaited him ; his crime had brought him immense notoriety ; 
his musings would be worth their weight in gold at the 
booksellers ; he would become fabulously rich, would attract 
the notice of some great lady, and would marry beyond 
the seas. By similar promises the phantom demon formerly 
incited Gilles de Laval, lord of Retz, from crime to crime. 
A man capable of evoking the devil, according to the rites 
of the Grimoire of Honorius, is so far on the road to evil 
that he is inclined to all kinds of hallucinations and false¬ 
hoods ; but the aberrations of perversity do not constitute 
madness, as the execution of this criminal proved. The 
desperate resistance he offered to his executioners is well 
known. “ It is a deception,” he cried; “ I cannot die thus. 
An hour only—one hour—to write to the emperor; he would 
save me!” 

Who, then, had deceived him ? Who had promised him 
life? Who had assured him beforehand of an impossible 
clemency, for his reprieve would have outraged the public 
conscience ? Ask all this of the Grimoire of Honorius ! 

Two things in this tragical history correspond with the 
phenomena of Home,—the stormy sound heard by the 
wicked priest during his first evocation, and the perturbation 
which prevented him speaking his mind in the presence of 
Eliphas Levi. There may also be noticed the apparition 
of a sinister man rejoicing in the public sorrow, and making 
a truly diabolical speech in the middle of the dismayed 
crowd—an apparition seen only by the ecstatic of La Salette, 
the notorious Mdlle. de la Merlikre, who has the aspect, 
notwithstanding, of a good and respectable person, though 
one strongly impressionable, and possibly liable to talk and 
act unconsciously under the influence of a kind of ascetic 
somnambulism. 


EPILOGUE, 


EMBODYING THE SPIRIT OF THE AUTHOR’S 
PHILOSOPHY. 


I.—The Vision of the Wandering Jew. 

“Go onward!” cried the Jew Ahasuerus to Christ as He 
staggered beneath His Cross. “ Do thou go onward,” 
replied the Saviour of the world, “ till I return hither and 
bid thee rest.” 

From that time Ahasuerus has traversed the world un¬ 
ceasingly, and every year, about Easter, he returns to the 
home of his accursed race, to see if he shall meet Jesus. 
He approaches, he arrives, broken-down, breathless, ready 
to expire with fatigue—he arrives and finds no one. He 
raises his eyes and beholds in the ever implacable sky a 
hand which points westward ! “ Go onward ! ” cries a voice 

to him which seems to be an eternal echo of his own on 
the day of his crime, and the old Ahasuerus bows his head; 
the sigh of deliverance which swelled already in his heart 
sinks silently and without tears; he recommences his age¬ 
long journey. 

In the days when the Crusaders took Jerusalem, the 
Wandering Jew was told that Christ had returned to the 
Holy Mount; but he found only a priest encircled by 
military. “A Jew! a Jew!” cried some whose hands 
were blood-stained. “ Get on ! get on ! ” shouted the 
soldiers, as they smote the old man with their maces and 
goaded him with the points of their lances. Ahasuerus 
bowed his head and took his departure amidst the male¬ 
dictions of the crowd. 

“Alas!” he murmured, “not yet can the Cross absolve 

480 



EPILOGUE 


481 


me, since it has not taught forgiveness to its defenders. 
Men venerate it only as an instrument of torture and 
an incentive to revenge! Madmen, they would avenge 
Him who saved them by pardoning them, and they do not 
see that they condemn themselves by annulling the forgive¬ 
ness of the man-god ! They see not that persecution prac¬ 
tised by the Christians is an abjuration of the martyrs and 
a restoration of their executioners ! ” 

Therefore, when Ahasuerus found the Jews oppressed by 
the Christians, he pledged them to die rather than renounce 
the faith of their fathers, and he himself, with his world-old 
staff in his hand, his beard and hair blown by the wind, 
led them forward from exile to exile. Better than anyone, 
nevertheless, did he know that Jesus was the only Son of 
God! 

At a later period he beheld the Cross cast down and the 
scaffolds rise up; he heard the holy guillotine celebrated, 
and was in no way surprised—had not the Inquisition 
already inaugurated its festivals of death in the name of 
the Holy Cross ? The cultus was the same, the altar alone 
was changed. There was talk also of humanity -and pro¬ 
gress, and justly, for the axe is more speedy and less cruel 
than the bloody pillory of Golgotha. 

Once more he witnessed the solemnities of the Golden 
Calf established ; he knew how such orgies end, and when 
they asked him, “ What is the carpenter’s son making now ? ” 
he answered, shaking his head, “ A coffin ! ” For he felt 
that the time was short and his pace seemed to slacken; 
he surveyed in turn the expiring century and the whirl of 
events. 

On the day when the successor of St Peter fell, to be 
supported henceforth by a sceptre, when he departed from 
the Eternal City exiled and cursed in his turn, Ahasuerus 
entered the deserted Vatican, and, with his elbow resting on 
the empty chair of the popes, he let his head fall on his 
hand, and for a moment seemed to sleep. He saw in a 
dream the country about Jerusalem clothed once more 
with its primeval fertility; the vine of the Promised Land 
with its immense grapes, and the olive trees loaded with fruit, 
clad the hills, while the valleys were rich in bay trees and 


2 h 


482 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


roses in full bloom. The mountain of Moria was covered 
with an innumerable multitude, formed by deputations 
from every nation of the earth, and on the summit of the 
Holy Mount stood a vast altar. In the centre of the altar 
was a gigantic golden candlestick reaching to the clouds, 
surmounted by a golden monstrance, and in the centre of 
the monstrance there appeared, white and transparent, the 
Divine Host of the Sacrifice of Love, the wheaten synthesis, 
the symbol of divine and human unity, the bread of social 
union and universal communion. 

An old man was standing erect before the altar, holding 
in one hand a thin white wafer, like that in the monstrance, 
and in the other a chalice. Celestial music was heard, and 
from the front row of every phalanx ascended clouds of 
incense. Several men in splendid vestments brought forward 
a table which they covered with white linen. One of these 
men wore the dress of the sovereign pontiff of the Christian 
Law, the second that of the chief of the Imans, the third 
was habited like the high priest of the Jewish Law, a 
fourth wore the ornaments of the Grand Lama, and all 
acted and prayed in concert, seeming to be united as 
brethren. 

It was the day on which Christ rose from the dead, and 
already more than two thousand times the world had cele¬ 
brated the anniversary, but none had been so splendidly 
impressive as was this. The music ended ; silence fell on 
the throng, and every eye turned towards the West, Then 
another old man was seen to appear, whose beard and hair 
covered his breast and shoulders; he cast down his staff of 
travel, straightened himself with a long sigh, and, raising 
his tear-filled eyes to Heaven, allowed himself to be clothed 
in a white garment. He looked at the Host, and exclaimed, 
weeping, “ ’Tis He ! ” He looked at the priest, who, elected 
by universal suffrage, performed on this day the office of 
supreme pontiff, and repeated, “ ’Tis He ! ” He looked at 
the silent and re-collected crowd, and extended his hands 
in an attitude of thanks, still saying, “It is He! It is He, 
living in all; He only everywhere and for ever ! ” 

Then the priest of the people came down from the altar; 
a chair was set before the Holy Table on which was placed 


EPILOGUE 483 

the Host and chalice, and the pontiff, addressing the ancient 
man, said, “ Rest thyself, Ahasuerus ! ” 

Then the hierarchs of every past religion came after the 
priest of the universal association to imprint the kiss of 
peace on the white beard of the reconciled outcast, after 
which all gathering about the table communicated with 
him. Thereat Ahasuerus felt himself informed with new 
life; it seemed to him as if he were himself the Christ, and 
that breaking the bread which multiplied on the Holy 
Table, he distributed it to the multitude. 

So finished the dream of the Wandering Jew ; a clatter 
of arms and anguished cries awoke him, as the brigands of 
the nations pillaged the Holy City. He issued from the 
palace of the popes, which tottered over tombs torn open, 
and again set out to continue his circuit of the world, 
which soon, perchance, he will recommence no more. Pity 
him not, all ye who encounter him bent, breathless, and 
travel-stained. He is more fortunate than the great politicians 
of our century, or the last monarchs of the world; he knows 
whither he is going. 

II. —The Farewell to Calvary. 

Jesus crossed the desolate meadows of Judea, and paused 
on the arid summit of the ancient Calvary. There an 
angel with frowning brow and darkened eye was seated 
enveloped in his two vast wings. It was Satan, the King 
of the old world. 

The rebel angel was sad and fatigued, and he turned 
away his eyes in disgust from a world where the sin was 
without genius, where the satiety of a cowardly corruption 
had succeeded the titanic combats of the giant passions 
of eld. He felt that in tempting mankind he had instructed 
the strong and had deceived only the weak; so did he 
deign no longer to tempt any one, and gloomy beneath 
his golden diadem, he heard vaguely the fall of souls into 
eternity, like the monotonous drops of an unceasing rain. 

Prompted by a power which was unknown to him, he 
had taken his seat on Calvary, and pondering over the 
death of the Man-God, he felt jealous of it. He was a 


484 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


powerful and beautiful angel, but he was jealous of the 
Christus, and this jealousy was typified by a serpent plunging 
its fangs into his breast and devouring his heart. Jesus 
stood before him, with Mary His mother, and gazed at him 
in silence with profound compassion. Satan in his turn 
beheld the Redeemer, and bitterly smiled. 

“Comest Thou,” he asked, “seeking to die once more for 
a world which Thy first passion could not save ? Hast Thou 
tried vainly to change stones into bread for the nourishment 
of Thy people, and dost Thou approach me to confess Thy 
defeat? Hast Thou fallen from the summit of the Temple, 
and has Thy divinity been broken in the descent ? Dost 
Thou come to adore me that Thou may’st possess the world ? 
Go, it is now too late, and I would not deceive Thee! The 
empire of the world has passed over to those who adore me 
in Thy name, and I myself am weary of dominion devoid of 
glory. If Thou be discouraged as I am, sit down beside me, 
and think no longer of either God or men.” 

“ I come not to sit down beside thee,” replied Christ; “ I 
come to raise thee up, to forgive, and to console thee, that 
thou mayest cease being wicked.” 

“ I desire not thy pardon,” the evil angel answered, “ and 
it is not I who am wicked. The wicked one is he who im¬ 
plants the thirst for knowledge in minds and then shrouds 
truth in an impenetrable mystery. It is he who reveals to 
their desire an ideal virgin; they grow delirious with the 
intoxication of her beauty but he surrenders her to them only 
to tear her immediately from their embraces, and load her 
with eternal chains. It is he, in fine, who endows angels 
with liberty, and has prepared infinite torments for those who 
will not be his slaves—he who has slain his innocent son 
on the pretext of visiting the crimes of the guilty upon him, 
and yet has not pardoned the guilty, but has laid the death of 
his son as a new crime at their doors ! ” 

“ Why do you remind me so bitterly of the ignorance and 
errors of men?” said Jesus. “Better than thou do I know 
how they have distorted the image of God, but well dost thou 
also know that God is not like the image they have made of 
Him. God has not endowed thee with the thirst of know¬ 
ledge except to slake it for ever in the waters of eternal truth ; 


EPILOGUE 


485 


but why close thine eyes and await the day within thee instead 
of looking up to the sun ? If thou seek the light where it is, 
thou shalt find the light, for in God there are neither shadows 
nor mysteries; the shadows are in thee alone, and mysteries 
are the limitations of thine understanding. God has not given 
liberty to His creatures to take it back again, but He has given 
it as a bride and not as an illegitimate love; He desires us to 
possess it, not to outrage it, for this chaste daughter of Heaven 
never survives violence; when its virginal dignity is wounded, 
liberty is dead for him who has misused it. God does not 
wish for slaves; it is revolted pride that has created servitude. 
God’s law is the royal rule of His creatures and the title-deeds 
of their eternal liberty. God has not killed His Son, but the 
Son of God laid down His life freely that He might destroy 
death, and for this reason He now lives in the whole of 
humanity, and will save all generations, for from trial to trial 
He leads the human family into the Promised Land, whereof 
the first fruits have been already tasted. I come therefore to 
announce to thee, O Satan, that thy last hour has arrived, 
unless, at least, thou art willing to be free and reign over the 
world with me, by love and intelligence ! But thou shalt be 
called Satan no longer, thou shalt reassume the glorious name 
of Lucifer, and I will set a star upon thy forehead and a torch 
in thy hand. Thou shalt be the genius of toil and industry, 
because thou hast much struggled, much suffered, and dolo¬ 
rously thought. Thou shalt spread thy wings from pole to 
pole, and brood over the world. Instead of the haughtiness 
of isolation, thou shalt be the sublime pride of self-devotion, 
and I will give thee the sceptre of earth and the key of 
heaven.” 

“I understand thee not; I shall never understand thee; 
well dost thou know that I can love no longer,” and with a 
sorrowful gesture the fallen angel showed Christ the wound 
which furrowed his breast, and the serpent devouring his 
heart. 

Jesus turned towards His mother and looked at her; Mary 
understood the glance of her son ; she drew near to the un¬ 
happy angel, and did not disdain to stretch forth her hand 
towards him and touch his wounded breast. The serpent 
thereupon dropped of itself and expired at the feet of Mary, 


486 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


who crushed its head ; the wound in the angel’s heart was 
healed, and a tear, the first he had shed, coursed slowly down 
the face of the repentant Lucifer ; this tear was as precious as 
the blood of a god, and all the blasphemies of hell were atoned 
for by it. The regenerated angel prostrated himself on 
Calvary, and, weeping, kissed the place were the Cross was 
once driven in. Then he rose triumphant in hope and 
radiant with love, to cast himself into the arms of Christ. 
Calvary trembled thereat; its arid summit was suddenly 
clothed with fresh and brilliant verdure; it blossomed out in 
flowers, while, in the place where the Cross had stood, a 
young vine rose loaded with ripe and fragrant grapes. 

Then said the Saviour: “ This is the vine which shall 
provide the wine of universal communion, and it shall grow 
till its branches encircle all the earth.” Then, taking his 
mother by one hand, he extended the other to the angel, and 
said to him: “ Let our symbolic forms now return into heaven, 
I shall never more come down to die on this mountain. 
Here shall Mary lament her son no more, nor Lucifer bring 
remorse for his now obliterated crime. We are one spirit 
henceforth—the spirit of intelligence and love, the spirit of 
liberty and courage, the spirit of life victorious over death.” 

All three then took their flight through space, and rising to 
an immense height, they beheld the earth and all its kingdoms 
extending roads towards each other, like interlacing arms ; 
they saw the country green already with the first fraternal 
harvests, and from East to West they heard the mysterious 
prelude of the canticle of union, while northward on the 
crest of a bluish mountain they saw, in dim outline, the 
gigantic form of a man raising his arms to heaven. On his 
limbs were still the recent traces of the fetters he had broken, 
and his breast was scarred like Lucifer’s. Beneath his right 
foot, on the sharpest peak of the mountain, there still palpi¬ 
tated the dead body of a vulture with wings and head hanging 
down. This mountain was Caucasus, and the liberated giant 
was the antique Prometheus. Thus the great divine and 
human symbols met and recognized each other under the 
same sky; then they vanished to make place for God Him¬ 
self, who came to dwell for ever among men. 


EPILOG IfE 


487 


HI.— The Reign of Messiah. 

When the spirit of understanding shall have spread over 
the whole earth, a time will come when the Gospel spirit shall 
be the light of nations. The basis of power will be under¬ 
stood to be absolute reason, as it is declared in the long 
misconstrued proem of the Gospel according to St John. 
Then will Christ be daily born no longer symbolically on our 
altars, but really and corporeally in every part of the earth. 
Has He not declared that the least among us is Himself? 
So the birth of every child shall be a Christmas, and all shall 
venerate the Saviour in one another. Christ will be no longer 
poor, hungry, proscribed, destitute of bride and of children, 
hunted and crucified. He will be rich like Job when his 
trials were over, in universal abundance; He will be bride¬ 
groom and father, He will reign and pardon all his perse¬ 
cutors. For one day all nations shall be one nation, all 
thrones be subject to one throne, and on this will be seated 
a Just man filled with the spirit of Jesus Christ, who thus 
will be Jesus Christ Himself, as we all may be if He abide 
within us. This King shall reconcile the East with the West 
and the North with the South; he will endow the peoples 
with true liberty, for he will immovably establish the pillars of 
justice. By repressing license, he will abolish misery. All 
will have the right and opportunities to do well, none to 
degrade themselves and do viciously. Punishment will be 
succeeded by moral hygiene, criminals will be looked on as 
diseased, and will be subjected to the treatment of the 
deranged. The great expiation of the Cross is sufficient for 
all human offences, and will eventually abolish the gibbet, 
which will be execrable from the moment that it is use¬ 
less. 

Error will thenceforth be accorded no real existence; truth 
only exists, falsehood is as perishable as a dream. There 
will be then only one religion in the world, and the universal 
pontiff- will declare from the pinnacle of supreme authority 
that Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, &c., are Christians ill- 
instructed, of whom he is none the less father and head. He 
will bless them and convene them to the great council of the 
nations; he will throw open to them the inexhaustible wealth 


488 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC . 


of prayers and indulgences, and will really and truly bestow 
his benediction on the City and on the World. 

This will be the period of the return of the Prodigal Son, 
who no longer possesses anything, but his brother will lend to 
him, and he will work that he may regain his portion. It will 
be the hour when the five foolish virgins, having at length 
procured oil for their lamps, will come back knocking at the 
gate, AND SHOULD THE BRIDEGROOM REFUSE 
TO OPEN TO THEM, THE PRUDENT VIRGINS 
WILL STRETCH OUT THEIR HANDS AND HELP 
THEM TO COME IN BY THE WINDOW, for the final 
message of Christianity is reciprocity, restoration, universal 
love; and I assure you, in all truth, that there is not a saint 
in heaven who is not willing to descend into hell to deliver 
poor souls therefrom, even were it necessary to take their 
place with the doors shut against him for ever. Can you 
possibly conceive a heaven poised over hell ? an eternal feast 
in face of an eternal pyre ? a house of peace and prayer with 
a vault full of groans and torments beneath ? One only 
dream can fill the everlasting repose of each of the beatified, 
the deliverance of some reprobate; and if this were a hopeless 
dream, it would become a nightmare more terrible than even 
the torments of hell. 

It was in this manner that the Gnostics—that is, those who 
knew , in other words, the initiates of primitive Christianity— 
interpreted the oracles uttered by the spirit of Jesus Christ; 
they were followed by the disciples of Origen, but the Church 
condemned them, and rightly, for they divulged the secret 
doctrines, and profaned the mysteries of the Master. In 
extending the hopes of the multitude, the law must not be 
deprived of its awful penalty, and the dogma of eternal 
perdition only signifies after all the eternal divorce between 
good and evil. 


IV.— The Final Vision. 

Above material forms and the terrestrial atmosphere, there 
is a realm where souls are set free from the chains which 
bind them. The ethereal aromas, obedient to fancy, clothe it 
successively with all the splendours of ideal grace, and popu- 


EPILOGUE 


489 

late the spiritual world of poetry and vision with creatures of 
marvellous beauty. Into this region our fairest dreams 
transport us during sleep; there in laborious watches inspira¬ 
tion carried those great poets, who, in all ages, were enabled 
to foresee, by the perceptions of harmony, the great destinies 
of humanity. There images exist and analogies reign, for 
poetry is in imagery, and the harmony of images is essentially 
analogical. In this ideal region ^Eschylus beheld the torments 
of Prometheus, and Moses heard Jehovah speak. There the 
greatest of the Oriental poets, the Eagle of Patmos, the singer 
of the Apocalypse, saw the Christian Church, under the figure 
of a woman in labour who brings forth painfully the Man of 
the Future. In this wondrous world of poetry and revelation, 
God appeared to him veiled in light and holding the ever¬ 
lasting Gospel in His hand, which opened slowly, while 
plagues tormented the world and angels of destruction fur¬ 
rowed the earth to make place for the city of harmony and 
holy unity, the New Jerusalem which comes down ready built 
out of heaven, because the conception of harmony exists in 
God, and will be realized of itself on earth when men under¬ 
stand it. 

The glorious vision of Christ, after traversing the earth, 
ascended into this ethereal region, and there the Redeemer 
disclosed to the once rebellious and henceforth regenerate 
angel the great army of martyrs. All the sacrifices of human 
despotism might be seen there, all who had chosen to die 
rather than be false to their consciences, the victims of 
Antiochus, the martyrs of the ancient Rome, and the holo¬ 
causts of the second Rome—some for their legitimate beliefs, 
others for dreams and delusions, had faced human tyranny 
bravely, and all were pure in God’s sight, for they had suffered 
in the preservation of the noblest and most beautiful of gifts 
—liberty. 

Long had their white-robed souls sighed beneath the altar 
and cried out for justice. At length the hour was come, 
and all, with their palms in their hands, came before the 
Redeemer, as He stood between His mother and the restored 
angel to ask what revenge they desired on their persecutors. 

“Lord, let their souls be delivered to us, that we may 
dispose of them for eternity as they disposed of us in time ! ” 


49 ° 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Christ thereupon committed to their keeping the keys of 
heaven and hell, saying, “ The souls of your oppressors are 
in your power.” 

A cry of joy and triumph pealed from the heights of heaven 
to the depths of the abyss, the martyr-spirits threw open the 
gates of hell, and stretched forth their hands to their murderers. 
Each of the reprobates found an elect for his protector, heaven 
enlarged its boundary, and the virgin mother wept with joy 
when she beheld so many children whom she thought she 
had lost for ever crowding around her. While all heaven was 
smiling on this magnificent spectacle, a new sun rose over the 
earth, and night folded its wings in the west. The darksome 
clouds of the past fled, peopled with phantoms, which were 
the shades of the grand extinct monarchies and the ancient 
vanished religions. Between the night and coming morning, 
the light whitened the head of an aged man, as he sat with his 
face turning eastward. This was the wanderer of the Christian 
centuries, the outlaw of a savage civilization, the type of the 
Parias, the old Ahasuerus at length resting. The people had 
found a fatherland, the Wandering Jew had received his pardon. 

The earth now was the Temple of God; universal reci¬ 
procity had realized Christian charity; all laboured and lived 
for each, as each for all. All rejoiced peaceably in the 
fruit of their toil; none of God’s children perished through 
want beside the table of their father, for the fair division of 
labour made life easy to the whole race; confederacy had 
increased the wealth of the earth, and the union of every 
interest had given human toil a direction so divine, and an 
energy so marvellous, that the very seasons had altered; 
there was a new heaven and a new earth, according to the 
promise of the apostle; and Jesus said to the angel of light 
and genius,—“ Behold the work thou must accomplish ! 
Behold the new city of intelligence and love ! 

“ The earth is ready, it thrills with expectation. Men 
now see it, as once it was seen by the prophet, covered with 
bones and ashes; but fresh life stirs already in the dust, 
and a divine tremor passes through the dry bones. Soon 
will they rise, and a new people will cover the countries of 
the world. Then shall humanity issue as from a long sleep, 
and will seem to behold the day for the first time ! ” 


EPILOGUE 


49 1 


Having spoken these words, Christ prostrated Himself 
before the throne of His Father, saying, “Lord, Thy will 
be done on earth as it is in heaven.” 

And the Virgin, who is the type of the regenerated woman, 
and the angel of liberty transformed into the genius of order 
and harmony, with all the compensated martyrs, and all 
repentant reprobates delivered from their agonies, responded 
together by that mysterious word which joins the will of 
creatures to that of their Creator, and all human energies 
to divine power—Amen ! 


THE THREE CREDOS OF ELIPHAS LEVI. 

I.—The Creed of the Magus. 

We believe in the eternal and infinite sovereignty of im¬ 
movable wisdom and creative intelligence. We believe in the 
supreme beauty of just goodness, and of merciful and loving 
justice. We believe in the fruitfulness of progress in due 
order, and of order eternally progressive. We believe in the 
principle of universal life, in the principle of Being and of 
beings, ever distinct from Being and beings, but necessarily 
present in Being and beings. We believe that the whole 
and entire principle, in all things and in all places, cannot 
be contained, enclosed, limited, bounded or defined in any 
manner, and that consequently every form, every distinctive 
name, every personal and exclusive revelation of this prin¬ 
ciple, are idolatries and errors. We believe that the principle 
abides in us all, and speaks to all by the voice of conscience, 
that conscience cannot be enlightened without the concur¬ 
rence of faith and reason, science and devotion. We believe 
in the absolute reason by which individual reasonings must 
be directed and corrected, which must also be accepted as 
the foundation of faith, and the measure of all doctrines, 
under pain of fanaticism, madness, and error. We believe in 
the absolute love which is called the spirit of charity and is 
the inspirer of sacrifice. We believe that we must give if we 
would enrich ourselves, that we are made happy by the 
felicity of others, and that well-ordered egotism must begin 


49 2 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


with our neighbour. We believe in the liberty, the absolute 
independence, the royalty, and the relative divinity of human 
will, when it is ruled by sovereign reason. We believe that 
God Himself, the great indefinable principle, can be neither 
despot nor executioner of His creatures, that He can neither 
reward nor punish them, but that law carries its inherent 
sanction, so that our own well-being is the recompense of 
well-doing, while evil is the scourge, but also the cure, of evil. 
We believe that the spirit of charity is inflexible only when 
it inspires devotion and peace, but that all men are liable 
to self-deception, above all when they pass judgment upon 
matters which they do not comprehend or know. We believe 
in the catholicity, that is to say, the universality of dogma. 
We believe that in religion all intelligent men accept the 
same truths, and only dispute over errors. We believe that 
the most reasonable are also the most patient men, and that 
the persecutors of those who think differently from them¬ 
selves prove by their very violence that they are wrong. We 
believe that all gods are phantoms, and that idols are 
nothingness, that established worships must make way for 
others, and that the wise man can pray in a mosque as well 
as in a church. At the same time, we prefer the mosque to 
the pagoda and the church to the mosque, provided that 
the church be not defiled by an evil priest. Finally, we 
believe in one God, and in religion, one like Him, in God, 
blessing all gods, and in religion absorbing or annulling all 
religions. We believe in the universal, absolute, and infinite 
Being who demonstrates the impossibility of the void, and 
do in no way admit that nothing can be or become 
something. We recognise two essential modes of Being, 
idea and form, intelligence and action. We believe in 
truth, which is Being conceived by Idea ; in reality, which 
is Idea demonstrated or demonstrable by science ; in reason, 
which is Being accurately expressed by the Word ; in justice, 
which is Being put in action according to its true corre¬ 
spondences and its rational proportions. We believe in 
the perpetual and progressive revelation of God in the de¬ 
velopments of our intelligence and our love. We believe in 
the spirit of truth inseparable from the spirit of charity, and 
we term it with the Church Catholic:—Spirit of Knowledge, 


EPILOGUE 


493 


opposed to the obscurantism of bad priests; Spirit of under¬ 
standing, opposed to the follies of the superstitious; Spirit of 
strength, resisting the prejudices and the calumnies of false 
believers; Spirit of piety, filial, social, and humanitarian, 
opposed to the impious egotism of those who would let all 
perish to save their own souls; Spirit of council, because true 
charity begins with the spirit, and first assists the soul; 
finally, Spirit of the fear of evil, which tramples on fear of 
men, and warns us from paying a sacrilegious worship to evil 
by making ourselves a capricious and wicked God. We 
believe that this Spirit is that of the Gospel, and was that of 
Jesus Christ. Hence we adore God living and working 
through Jesus Christ, whom we do not represent as a God 
distinct and separable from God Himself, Jesus having been 
true and complete man like ourselves, but sanctified by the 
plenitude of the Divine Spirit, speaking by His mouth, living 
and acting within Him. We believe in the moral and divine 
sense of the legendary Gospel, the letter of which is imperfect, 
while its spirit is eternal. We believe in one holy universal 
Church, of which the Roman Church has been the beginning 
and the figure. We believe that the laws of Moses, of the 
Apostles, and of the Popes who are their successors, have 
been transitory, but that the law of charity is eternal. Hence 
we reject and condemn no one. We believe that well-ordered 
egotism begins with others, and that those who give are those 
who are truly rich. We believe in the infallibility of the 
spirit of charity, and not in that of the dogmatic temerity of 
certain men. We believe in eternal life, and do therefore 
fear not death either for ourselves or for the living whom we 
love. We confess wholly the thirteen articles of the Symbol 
of Maimonides, and do therefore regard the Israelites as our 
brethren. We confess that God alone is God, and that 
Mahomet was one of His Word-Precursors, which is the 
meaning of the term prophet, and hence we fraternize with 
the Mussulmans. But we pity and blame the Jews who call 
us Goi, and the Mussulmans who call us Giaours. We cannot 
communicate with them in this, because in this they are out¬ 
side charity. We confess the Symbol of the Apostles, St 
Athanasius, and Nicea, recognising that they must be ex¬ 
plained in a hierarchic manner, and that they express the 


494 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


highest mysteries of occult philosophy. But we condemn 
condemnation, and we excommunicate excommunication as 
outrages upon universal charity and solidarity. We confess 
the disciplinary and mediating infallibility of the chief of the 
Church, but those who attribute to him a doctrine-making and 
arbitrary infallibility we regard as unfortunate madmen. The 
pope is the lawful interpreter and preserver of ancient beliefs, 
but if he would impose new ones, he goes beyond his duty, and 
has no more authority than another preacher of foolishness. 
We study tradition, but do not accord it authority save in 
matters of criticism, for it is the common receptacle of the 
truths and errors of antiquity. The antiquity of belief, says 
Tertullian, is often only the age of error. 

Such is the profession of faith which must slowly unite and 
absorb all others. Such is the religion of the great souls of 
the future. How many men are there in a position to under¬ 
stand it at present? I cannot say, but I think could a 
prophet publish it with uplifted voice in the presence of 
assembled nations, he would be stoned by all the priests 
amidst the contempt of the populace and barely regretted 
by a few sages. Meanwhile the pope levies troops and coins 
dogmas. Veuillot distils his ordure and analyses the smells 
of Paris. Paris sniffs in turn at the odour of Veuillot. 
Veuillot washes his hands, and says: It is the odour of 
Rome! and the temporal power, the Vatican prostitute, does 
not blush to have Veuillot for its supporter. At Paris, 
censure interdicts the representation of the Galileo of 
Ponsard. Is it true that the earth moves no longer? O 
ever-renewing reign of terror, continual insurrection of 
beast against angel, assured alliance of tyrannies against the 
intelligence which is always free! O folly brevetted ever ! 
O spirit ever condemned ! How long will you invert the 
order of this unfortunate world ? 


II.— The Catholic and Magical Symbol. 

Maker of heaven and earth, one Lord alone, 
Almighty Father, God eterne, I own. 


EPILOGUE 


495 


I own one Saviour-King, man’s chief and mine— 
Son, Word, and Splendid Light of the Divine; 

The world’s desire in every age and place— 

Not God apart from God in Him we trace; 

He came on earth to set us free from earth, 

And woman raised by her who gave Him birth. 

The heavenly man was He, both mild and wise, 
Like us is born, and like us toils and dies; 

Proscribed by ignorance and envy, He 
The Cross endured, that life in us might be. 

All those who take Him for support and guide, 
May by His words like Him be deified. 

So is He risen, through the ages reigns; 

The night, the darkness flee, His sun remains : 

And better known His precepts stronger grow, 
They judge the living here and dead below. 

I own one Holy Ghost, by heart and mind 
Of saints and prophets sole in truth divined. 

This Breath of Life from God and man proceeds, 
And all that lives to life’s increase it leads. 

Then in the holy household I believe, 

The just made perfect whom the heavens receive. 

One faith, one creed, I hold, one Holy Place, 
One pope, one worship of one God of grace. 

I hold that death, by changing, makes us newly, 
And life in us, as God, is endless truly. 

III. —The Philosophical Credo. 

That God personifies the great unknown, 

By being and vastness proved, for truth I own ; 
Supernal concept of the wise is He, 

Good, perfect, mind, and ideality. 


49<3 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


That finite things the infinite confess, 

And reason does not fail, I do profess; 

To hope I hold, and towards the soul I win, 

Whene’er I feel that love despises sin. 

In men of love, intelligence, and worth, 

I say the ideal is made known on earth; 

My church includes the just of every school, 

The universal is my doctrine’s rule. 

The pangs of birth in suffering I discern; 

In ill good’s shadow which to good will turn; 

By human toil life’s conquests are enjoyed; 

Love is all good, and Satan is the void. 

In every creed one hope expressed I see, 

The world’s whole law is solidarity; 

Justice and truth, these to attain I yearn, 

These twain all idol-altars overturn. 

I trust that right relieves strict duty’s stress, 

More from the strong demands, from weak ones less; 
That God the true is outraged by our fear, 

But that our effort must His care draw near. 

I hold that nature is a harmless force, 

Abused unpunished by no erring course, 

That retribution stirs and sharpens thought, 

And cure, not vengeance by its pangs is wrought. 

I hold when sin is of its veils denuded, 

All shall be in the Father’s House included; 

Shadow of shining stars all errors deeming, 

Turn to the central light, for thence good’s rays are 
streaming. 


Thanks be unto Thee, oh my God, that Thou hast led 
me to this admirable Light! Thou art the supreme intel¬ 
ligence and absolute life of those numbers and those forces 
which obey Thee to populate the infinite with an inex- 


EPILOGUE 


497 


haustible creation. Thou art proved by mathematics, Thou 
art celebrated by the harmonies of existence, Thou art 
adored by all perishable forms ! 

Thou wast known to Abraham, Thou wast divined by 
Hermes, Pythagoras calculated Thy movements, Plato 
aspired unto Thee in all the dreams of his genius, but one 
only initiator, one sage alone, hath revealed Thee to the 
little ones of earth, one alone has been able to say of Thee 
—I and my Father are one; to Him be glory, therefore, 
since all His glory is thine ! 

Father, Thou knowest that he who writes these lines has 
much struggled and much suffered; he has endured poverty, 
calumny, revengeful proscription, imprisonment, the deser¬ 
tion of those he loved, and never, notwithstanding, has he 
considered himself unfortunate, since truth and justice 
remained for his consolation. 

Thou only art holy, oh God of truthful hearts and upright 
souls, and Thou knowest if ever I have thought myself pure 
in Thy sight! Like all men I have been the sport of human 
passions; at length I have conquered them, or Thou, rather, 
hast overcome them in me, and hast given me to repose in 
the profound peace of those who seek and who covet Thee 
only. 

I love mankind, because men, unless they are beside 
themselves, are only wicked through error or infirmity. 
They naturally love what is good, and it is by this love, 
which Thou hast given them as a support in the midst of 
their trials, that they must be, sooner or later, led back to 
the religion of justice by the love of truth. 

Let my book now go wherever Thy Providence may send 
it. If it contain the words of Thy wisdom, it will be stronger 
than oblivion; if, on the contrary, it abound but in errors, 
I know that my love of justice and of truth will, at least, 
survive it, and thus immortality cannot fail to engarner the 
aspirations and desires of my soul which Thou hast created 
immortal ! 



NOTES 


Note i. 

“The Threshold of Magical Science,” constituting the first part of the 
Mysteries, exhibits in a concise form the entire scope of the subject as it 
was understood by Eliphas Levi. Extreme statements on either side have 
been, as far as possible, omitted or brought into immediate contrast so 
that they may be checked readily by one another. The first section 
embraces all definitions of the science which are scattered through the 
voluminous originals, touches briefly upon the occult force which Levi re¬ 
garded as the instrument of all magic, divine and diabolical, and indicates 
the Tarot as the chief source of his own initiation. The second section 
deals with the qualities required for an adept, and the marks by which 
he is known. The distinction between the magician and the magist is 
important, because it shews that Eliphas Levi had a deep underlying dis¬ 
dain for the practice of magic, and did, in spite of a vague denial upon one 
occasion, regard it as the art of exploiting credulity by address. For him 
the intellectual knowledge was alone of value, and indeed the student as he 
proceeds will not fail to conclude for himself that this attitude was quite 
consistent with the interpretation of magical doctrine given by the author. 
That interpretation excludes the possibility of man entering into communi¬ 
cation with the world of spirits, and it excludes the world of spirits from 
communicating with man; the evocations of magic are delusive, and hence 
unprofitable, but the acquisition of certitude, by means of the science of 
analogies is of supreme value, and this, for Eliphas Levi, is the great gift 
of occultism. The distinction between magic and mysticism given in the 
third section is also of some moment, as exhibiting the standpoint of the 
author. Eliphas Levi was a transcendentalist, but he was not a mystic, 
for he denied the fundamental doctrine of mysticism, which is the pos¬ 
sibility of an immediate communication between the soul and God. He 
regards mysticism as aberration and madness, the “antithesis of intellectual 
light ”; and the mystic regards Levi merely as a brilliant speculator having 
no qualifications for real knowledge, an agnostic with an elaborate theory 
concerning veridic hallucinations. 

Note 2. 

The sacred pledge of the Rosicrucians is said to have been : “ Man is 
God and Son of God, and there is no other God but man.” Elsewhere 
Levi gives it himself as: “ Emmanuel God is in us.” I know of no 
authority for either version, but they are worth noting in connection with 

499 


5 °° 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


the reputed Rosicrucian recovery of the Lost Word, and may be compared 
with the answer which Levi would have given to the sphinx had he been 
in the place of CEdipus, and CEdipus might himself have given, had he 
been a French transcendentalism and had the devouring monster been 
a familiar spectacle outside the walls of Paris prior to 1870. 

Note 3. 

“You are reading Agrippa, and you tell me you have been disappointed. 
Did you then take him for a master ? Agrippa was only a daring profaner, 
fortunately very superficial in his studies. He never possessed the Keys 
of the Sepher Jetzirah and the Zohar. Agrippa was a bold, restless, and 
light soul. His book however, is the first which spread to some slight 
extent the learning of the higher sciences. Too superficial to be a magist, 
he liked to pass for a magician and a sorcerer; he is even accused of 
having occasionally coined false money under the pretext of Hermetic 
science, and he could scarcely do anything else as he was ignorant of the 
primary elements of the natural philosophy of Hermes. His works, how¬ 
ever, are useful reading when one knows more and better than he did. 
He was a seeker, like Father Kircher, only a little more of a charlatan, 
and less hampered by accepted prejudices, as he was not a Jesuit. 
Trithemius was a stronger man than Agrippa. ”—Letter to Baron Spedalieri. 
The great English mystic, Thomas Vaughan, held an opposite opinion, and 
referred all his knowledge to Agrippa. 

Note 4. 

The larvae are shadows of those who have lived on earth, leading gross, 
material lives, apart from all spiritual light, and are now separated from 
the divine and immortal spirit. They must be distinguished from the 
lemures, concerning whom Paracelsus has left a curious theory which will 
be found in a later note. The purification of larvae by reincarnation was 
taught by some Kabbalists. 

Note 5. 

The reference is to Baron Dupotet’s “ Magic Unveiled,” which was 
circulated in its original edition in a private manner among his disciples, 
an enormous price being asked for it. It is now published in the ordinary 
way. 

Note 6. 

The second division of ‘ * The Mysteries of Magic,” gives a summary 
of Levi’s doctrine concerning the existence of an occult universal force, 
namely, the Astral Light, concerning the double vibration of this force 
which constitutes its magical equilibrium, concerning the human will by 
which this force can be put in motion, concerning the magic chain by which 
the force can be multiplied according to the intention of the adept, concern¬ 
ing the intellectual faculty by which the adept establishes communication 
with the universal force in order to use his instrument, and concerning 
the supreme secret of direction. There is also a short statement of the 
fundamental axiom which rules magical operation. 


NOTES 


5 QI 


Note 7. 

It should be noticed that while the Great Magic Agent is called the 
world’s eye, imagination is characterized as the eye of the soul. Now the 
faculty of intuition is very closely connected, and in one sense identical, 
with imagination, so that the Astral Light may be called the intuition 0 
Nature. 

Note 8. 

“ Apollonius Tyaneus enveloped himself wholly in a mantle of fine wool, 
setting his feet thereon and drawing it over his head; then he bent his 
spinal column into a semicircle, and closed his eyes after performing certain 
rites, such as magnetic passes, and reciting sacramental words, designed to 
concentrate the imagination and determine the action of the will. The 
woollen mantle is of great use in magic, and is the usual vehicle of 
sorcerers when proceeding to the Sabbath, which proves that the 
sorcerers did not really go to the Sabbath, but that the Sabbath came to 
the sorcerers thus isolated in their mantle, and brought to their Trans- 
lucid images analogous to their magical preoccupations, mixed with 
reflections of all similar acts accomplished previously in the world.” 

Note 9. 

“All true initiates have recognized the immense utility of labour and 
suffering. Suffering, says a German poet, is the dog of that invisible 
shepherd who leads the flock of humanity. To learn how to suffer, to 
learn how to die, these are the gymnastics of eternity, the novitiate of im¬ 
mortality. Here is the moral of Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy,’ sketched so 
early as the time of Plato in the allegorical picture of Cebes. This 
picture, a description of which has come down to us, is at once a magical 
and philosophical monument. It is an extremely perfect moral synthesis, 
and at the same time the most audacious demonstration of the Great 
Arcanum, of that secret which, once revealed, would revolutionize heaven 
and earth. This secret is the royalty of the sage, the crown of the 
adept, who in the beautiful allegory of Cebes is represented descending 
victorious from the summit of trials .”—Histoire de la Magie> p. 147. 


Note 10. 

The instrument of philosophical and moral alchemy which £liphas 
Levi here refers to is that faculty of the risen and emancipated mind— 

“ By which from evil things, 

And things held worthless is the soul enrich’d.” 

The light proceeding from the Translucid and investing the world, “ the 
light that never was on land or sea,” that light in which the “ fairy- 
gifted poet beholds the same thing everywhere,” is the true alchemy 
which transmutes into gold “not only all metals, but also earth itself, 
and even the refuse of the earth.” The province of supreme and divine 
magic is to perpetuate the transmutation of the poet. 


5°2 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Note ii. 

The written tradition of Magic is comprised in the Kabbalah and the 
Hermetic books. This statement obtains only as regards occult philo¬ 
sophy in the West; Eliphas Levi is not an exponent of the Eastern 
wisdom. The substance of Hermetic tradition will be found in a separate 
section. The Kabbalah is treated at this early stage because it is the 
chief basis of Levi’s transcendental hypotheses. The following general 
observations did not find a place in the section and may be inserted here; 
they are derived from the introduction to the “ Doctrine of Trancendent 
Magic”:—“On penetrating into the sanctuary of the Kabbalah, one is 
seized with admiration at the sight of a doctrine so simple and at the 
same time so absolute. The necessary union of ideas and signs, the 
consecration of the most fundamental realities by primitive characters, 
the trinity of words, letters, and numbers; a philosophy simple as the 
alphabet, profound and infinite as the Logos; theorems more luminous 
and complete than those of Pythagoras ; a theology which may be 
epitomized by counting on the fingers; an infinity which can be held 
in the hollow of an infant’s hand : ten numerals and twenty-two letters, a 
triangle, a square, and a circle—such are the elements of the Kabbalah, 
such are the primary principles of the written word, shadow of that 
spoken Logos which created the world ! All truly dogmatic religions 
have issued from the Kabbalah and return therein ; whatever is scientific 
and grandiose in the religious dreams of all Illuminati —Jacob Boehmen, 
Swedenborg, Saint Martin, and the rest—has been borrowed from the 
Kabbalah; all masonic associations owe their secrets and their symbols 
thereto. The Kabbalah alone consecrates the alliance of universal reason 
and the Divine Word ; it establishes, by the counterpoise of two forces in 
apparent opposition, the eternal balance of existence ; it reconciles reason 
with faith, power with liberty, knowledge with mystery; it has the keys 
of the present, past, and future. To be initiated into the Kabbalah, it is 
insufficient to read and digest the writings of Reuchlin, Galatinus, Kircher, 
or Mirandola ; it is needful also to study the Hebrew writers in the collec¬ 
tion of Pistorius, the Sepher Jetzirah above all, and then the philosophy of 
love by Leon the Israelite. We must also master the great book of Zohar 
in the collection of 1684, entitled Cabala Denudata , the treatise on 
Kabbalistic Pneumatics, and that of the Revolution of Souls; then enter 
boldly into the luminous obscurity of the whole dogmatic and allegorical 
substance of the Talmud; after which we shall understand William 
Postel, and confess in an undertone that, his exceedingly premature and 
over-generous dreams of female emancipation set aside, this famous and 
erudite illumini was not such a maniac as is pretended by those who 
have not read him.” 

The Sepher Jetzirah, to which reference is made so frequently by 
Eliphas Levi, has been recently translated into English by Dr Wynn 
Westcott. The Sepher Dzeniouta is really the first book of the Zohar, 
and will be found in Mr S. L. M‘Gregor Mathers’ “ Kabbalah Unveiled.” 
The Zohar itself has only been partly rendered. The Latin version in the 
Kabbalah Denudata of Rosenroth will, of course, be known to students. 


NOTES 


5°3 


Note 12. 

The idea by no means originated with Pascal who probably derived it 
from the mystical theology of the Seraphic Doctor, S. Bonaventura. In 
the sixth chapter of the Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum (a work which 
should be in the hands of every student of mysticism), he says :—“ Rursus 
revertentes dicamus, quia igitur esse purissimum et absolutum, quod est 
simpliciter esse, est primarium et novissimum, ideo est omnium origo et 
finis consummans. Quia seternum et prsesentissimum, ideo omnes 
durationes ambit et intrat, quasi simul existens earum centrum et circum- 
ferentia. Quia simplicissimum et maximum, ideo totum intra omnia, et 
totum extra omnia, ac per hoc est sphcera intelligibilis , cujus centrum est 
ubique et circumferentia nusquam.” And Bonaventura himself derived it 
from a book attributed to Hermes. 

Note 13. 

The “Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine” were first printed in Michael 
Maier’s “Golden Tripod.” An English translation, with photographic 
reproductions of the seventeenth-century German copperplates, will be 
found in my edition of “The Hermetic Museum,” 2 vols. 4to, 1893. 

Note 14. 

In the chapter on Divination we were told that most religious revela¬ 
tions have been given in dreams, and that the patriarchs looked on 
dreams as “certain revelations.” Are the masters in modern Israel, of 
whom ihiphas Levi has made himself the uncommissioned and unac¬ 
credited spokesman, “greater than our father Abraham,” and wiser than 
Joseph the diviner ? 

Note 15. 

To these suggestive Talmudic citations may be fitly added the following 
story, which is taken from Levi’s “ History of Magic,” bk. iv., c. 3* In 
the days of St Louis, and, as it is believed, in the presence of his queen 
Blanche, the celebrated Rabbi Jechiel was required to reply to the 
objections of a converted Jew, named Douin, who had received the 
Christian name of Nicholas in baptism. After several discussions on 
texts in the Talmud, this passage was reached : “ If any one offer of the 
blood of his children to Moloch, let him die the death.” Such is the law 
of Moses, and here is the Talmudic commentary. “Pie therefore who 
shall offer not merely some, but all the blood and all the body of his 
children to Moloch, does not fall under the condemnation of the law, and 
no penalty can be inflicted on him.” At this incomprehensible reasoning 
all present cried out; some laughed with pity, the rest quivered with 
indignation. Silence could scarcely be obtained, and when at length 
Rabbi Jechiel was listened to, it was with marked disfavour, and as if his 
explanation was rejected beforehand. “ The penalty of death among us, 
said Techiel, is not a vengeance ; it is an expiation, and, as such, a recon¬ 
ciliation. All those who die by the law of Israel, die in the peace of 
Israel ; they receive reconciliation with death, and they sleep with our 


5°4 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


fathers ; no anathema goes down with them into the tomb ; they live 
in the immortality of the house of Jacob. Death is therefore a supreme 
grace ; it is the cure of a poisoned wound by the heated iron. But the 
iron is not applied to the incurable ; we have no jurisdiction over those 
whom the greatness of transgression cuts off for ever from Israel. Such 
are dead, and it is not for us to shorten the term of their suffering 
on earth; they are given over to the wrath of God. Man may chastise 
only to cure, and hence we do not punish the incurable. Those 
great criminals against whom our law pronounces no judgment, are 
thereby excommunicated for ever, and this condemnation is a worse 
punishment than death.” The reply of Rabbi Jechiel is admirable and 
represents the entire patriarchal genius of Israel. The Jews are truly our 
fathers in science, and had we sought to understand, instead of maltreating, 
them, they doubtless would now be less alienated from our faith. 

Note 16. 

But also two seek each other that they may become one. And the 
Nuctemeron, according to the Hebrews, says that when Adam and Eve 
entered the nuptial couch they were two, but when they rose they were 
four. 

Note 17. 

The fourth section contains Eliphas Levi’s interpretation of the Kabba- 
listic doctrine of spirits, and is placed prior to that on ceremonial magic, 
to show how the latter should be understood and regarded. It contains, 
also, the doctrines concerning the astral body and fluidic phantoms which 
explain for Levi the whole mystery of visions and evocations. This 
section embodies much material in opposition to the expositions of the 
“Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendent Magic,” but they appear to 
represent the more sincere, or at least the later views of the writer. 

Note 18. 

“The Book of the Revolutions of Souls ” will be found in the Zohar, 
and has never been translated into English. 

Note 19. 

“ There is not a people, and I may say there is not a man in possession 
of his true self, for whom the temporal universe is not a great allegory or 
fable which must give place to a Grand Morality.”— Louis Claude de 
Saint-Martin, lephilosophe inconnu , in his Tableau Naturel des Rapports 
qui existent entre Dieu VHomme et /’ Univers. 

Note 20. 

In utter contradiction to this express statement, and the occult tradition 
which it may be supposed to represent, Eliphas Levi insists elsewhere 
that created spirits must be clothed with bodies, the limitation consequent 
on which alone making their existence possible. Otherwise, he says, the 


NOTES 


5°5 


spirit would be everywhere, but everywhere in so imperceptible a degree 
that it would act nowhere. Even if it be correct that the Indian hiero¬ 
phants confuse the divine pneuma with the Astral Light, the blunder is 
not so ridiculous as this virtual identification of the intellectual and 
immortal essence with a tenuous vapour indefinitely diffused whenever the 
enclosing capsule is destroyed. 

[In reviewing the first edition of “ The Mysteries of Magic,” Mr A. P. 
Sinnett made an extended reference to this note, in the course of which 
he observed that “the spirit which can take nothing into Heaven except 
that which it brings from Heaven, may at one and the same time discard 
the astral body, and yet be clothed in ‘ Heaven ’ with a body adapted to 
the conditions of that state, and affording the limitations necessary for 
individual existence.” I agree gladly, but whether this idea was present 
to the mind of Eliphas Levi, when writing the passage under criticism, I 
still venture to doubt. Mr Sinnett, I may add, acknowledged with all 
frankness ‘ ‘ that Eliphas Levi undeniably wrote many passages in his later 
books, in sheer subservience to the intellectual tyranny of the Roman 
Catholic Church.”] 

Note 21. 

How can this statement be harmonized with that in the chapter on the 
Kabbalah which says that the elect are invariably in a minority, because 
“ the conditions of initiation can only be fulfilled by a small proportion of 
a vast multitude renewed from age to age, the process going on till the 
election and salvation of all ? ” This passage is intelligible only on the 
supposition of successive reincarnations of the same soul in different 
generations of humanity, in some one of which it will receive the crown 
of the adept. 

[Here again the same friendly reviewer endeavoured to bridge the 
fissure between the two statements by distinguishing the transitory from 
the permanent attributes of the human soul. Once more I agree, and 
willingly—but was that distinction present to the mind which made the 
statements? For an answer to this question I refer the reader to No. 33 
of the “ Kabbalistic Dogmas,” published now for the first time in English. 
The interpretation there given, conclusively exhibits Levi’s standpoint 
with regard to reincarnation. At the same time, a letter to Baron Speda- 
lieri does admit that reincarnations “may be obtained by spirits as 
penances or trials.” Eliphas Levi had few fixed opinions, and yet he 
never failed to express the impression of the moment, in the terms of an 
axiom and with an accent of absolute authority.] 

Note 22. 

The Generation of Spirits of the Air. “ Lemures gignuntur per 
deperditiones sestaticas spermatis et sanguinis menstrualis. Sunt ephemeri 
et maximi mortales. Constant aere coagulato in vapore sanguinis vel 
spermatis, et quasi bulla, quae si ferro frangatur perit anima imperfecta 
lemurum. Qumrunt simplices et credulos, fugiunt autem et doctos et 
ineptos insolentes ebriosos, &c. Timidi sunt et fugitivi sicut aves cceli et 


506 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


semper mori reformidant, quia bulla seris est vita eorum et statu facile 
corrumpitur. ”—Paracelsus. 


Note 23. 

The fifth section is entirely derived from the “ Doctrine and Ritual of 
Transcendent Magic,” in other words, from that treatise which the author 
spent the latter part of his life in qualifying and contradicting. It must 
therefore be read with great caution, bearing in mind the fact that the 
author’s own hypotheses reduce the best results of ceremonial magic to 
conscious hallucination. 

Note 24. 

It has just been remarked that these unemancipated spirits, these slaves 
of the elements, these beings devoid of free will, can only be incarnated 
as animals, and now we are told that they can be incarnated as vicious 
and imperfect men. Imperfection is common to the whole of humanity, 
even on the pinnacles of adeptship, and vice may degrade man below the 
level of the beast, but it cannot make him merely an animal. 

Note 25. 

The Abbot Trithemius is recognised as a great adept in the mysteries of 
magic, but Tiotwithstanding is reverenced by the church to which he 
belonged. Moreover, a German Benedictine defended him against the 
suspicion of sorcery which caused the Elector Palatine Frederick II. to 
burn some valuable original manuscripts, the work of the illuminated 
abbot. There can be no doubt all the same of his devotion to the occult 
sciences, but the archaeologist and historian to some extent redeemed 
or perhaps obscured the adept. Beside the monumental series of 
monastic chronicles by which Trithemius shed lustre on his religious order, 
the little treatise on “ Steganography ” looks outwardly trivial, and his 
method of communicating with absent persons by means of the spirits of 
the air was regarded, I suppose, as the aberration of a great mind. The 
modern world has forgotten the monastic chronicles and also the 
“Steganography”; so far as it remembers him at all, Trithemius is 
known by a, minute treatise De Septem Sectmdeis which was in great 
repute with Eliphas Levi, as will be seen by the passage which occasions 
this note. He has also for long been supposed to have annotated and 
illustrated a copy which has been for some time in the possession of Mr 
Edward Maitland. But this is a mistake, and Dr Wynn Westcott has 
recently translated * ‘ The Magical Ritual of the Sanctum Regnum ” which 
Levi wrote upon the blank leaves of the little Latin duodecimo ; it is an 
entirely independent treatise, which is not to be regretted, as the work of 
the learned Benedictine does not particularly justify the estimation in which 
it is held. 

Note 26. 

“ The pentagram is the Star of the Epiphany : lumen ad revelationem 
gentium. This star which the Magi saw in the east, this star of the 


NOTES 


5°7 


absolute and universal synthesis, which gives a head to the four quarters 
of the world, and embodies five times the ten Sephirotic numbers, gives 
to the sciences their absolute synthesis and opens to the aspirations of man 
the fifty gates of knowledge. This Star led the Magi to the manger of 
the ox and the ass in Bethlehem (the house of bread), that is, of the lofty 
reason, of the humility of dogma, and of the calling of the humble and 
laborious to share in the symbolic bread : the sacrament of love and truth. 
The child and the mother make two, the magi three. Melchior, the 
king of light (from melet, king, and aour light), who makes offering of 
gold ; Balthasar, the high priest, whose name in Syriac means ‘ guardian 
of the treasure,’ and in Hebrew ‘ profound peace ’; he comes bringing 
incense. And, finally, Gaspar or Gasphar, the believer, the man of the 
people, the restored sinner, the son of Ham reconciled, the black-faced 
Ethiopian, who comes to offer myrrh, which is the remedy for corruption, 
the emblem of repentance, and the perfume of death. The five personages 
thus explain the five rays of the Star. The picture of the mystery of the 
Epiphany is thus a marvellous pantacle, and the same thing holds good 
of all the symbolical pictures of our Christian legend. The book of God 
is written within and without, but it is still the book sealed with seven 
seals that none can open, that none can even look upon : et ego flebam 
multum , says St John, quia nemo dignus inventus est. We may still 
weep with the apostle, no longer because none can read, but because so 
few even think of reading. Patience, however : the book is written to be 
read. We are at the dawn of the day of manifestation : Epiphania. 
The child of Bethlehem is scarcely tw r o days born : mi lie anni tanquam 
dies una .”—Letter to Baron Spedalieri. 

Note 27. 

It is almost unnecessary to say that this pseudo-constitution is not the 
work of the pope to whom it is attributed. It is a production of the 
twelfth century ; Leo III. was elected in 792. Those who believe it to 
be genuine, if there be any at the present day, would be rendering good 
service to occultism by tracing its history during the period which 
succeeded the pontificate of the pretended author. See on this question 
the Dictionnaire des Sciences Occultes , in Migne’s Premiere Encyclopedic 
Theologique, article Leon III. 


Note 28. 

Elsewhere the author tells us that the figures of the seven planets with 
their squares are found in the Petit Albert , but that these allegorical and 
mythological symbols have become too classical and commonplace to be 
successfully traced on talismans in these days, and that we must have 
recourse to more expressive and recondite signs. But the signs which 
he himself provides in addition to those in the text are certainly anything 
but vulgarized. “The Kabbalistic signs of the seven spirits are—a 
lion-headed serpent for the Sun, a globe crossed by two descents for 
the Moon, a dragon gnawing the hilt of a sword for Mars, a lingam for 
Venus, a hermetic caduceus and cynocephalus for Mercury, the burning 


5°8 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


pentagram in the claws or beak of an eagle for Jupiter, an old cripple or 
a serpent twined about the heliacal stone for Saturn. All these signs are 
found on archaic gems, and particularly on the Gnostic talismans known 
by the name of Abraxas. In the collection of talismans of Paracelsus, 
Jupiter is replaced by a priest in sacerdotal garb, a substitution which is 
not wanting in a well-defined mystical significance.” 

Note 29. 

Jean Bodin, lawyer and demonographer, died of the plague in 1596, and 
it is uncertain to this day how he should be regarded ; while his printed 
work entitled “ The Demonomania of Sorcerers ” would have done honour 
to the credulity of Delrio and almost surpassed Torquemada in ferocity 
and fanaticism, he left behind him a volume in manuscript which much 
exercised his admirers, and he who had recommended savage tortures and 
lingering death not only to those who were sorcerers but to those who 
shewed pity for sorcerers, might himself have perished by the clemency of 
the Grand Inquisition. The MS., which seems never to have been printed, 
was entitled “A Septenary Colloquy concerning the Hidden Secrets of 
Sublime Things.” It is a controversial discourse between persons of 
various religions, the exponent of Christianity being frequently worsted by 
heathens. Whatever his real views, there is no doubt that Bodin materially 
helped in the diffusion of a sanguinary superstition ; it is to be hoped at 
least that he did so honestly; in any case the profound subtlety attributed 
him by Eliphas Levi is too much in advance of the time to be taken quite 
seriously. Delrio was a Jesuit who took up the mantle of sorcery, or 
more correctly the chasuble of the exorcist, when it fell from the shoulders 
of Bodin. He was more curious and learned than Bodin and of his sincerity 
there is no suspicion. His ‘ ‘ Six Books of Magical Disquisitions ” reduce 
witch-finding to an exact science and constitute also a safe guide for the 
ghostly confessor in dealing with evokers of ghosts. Being of unblemished 
orthodoxy, he is to be characterized only as a trifle credulous, but that is 
merely the loving exaggeration of a cardinal virtue. For the rest, he distin¬ 
guishes between infernal magic and an artificial magic of prestige, which 
is mere exploitation and imposture. He recognises also a natural magic, 
but in this respect is scarcely to be regarded as a precursor of David 
Brewster. He is worth reading—at least in the French translation of 1611 
— trte-rechercht , say the bibliophiles. A monograph on demonographers 
would be curious and even useful, given courage and a public, but it is a 
fell and weird field for adventure by unendowed research. Wierus 
preceded Bodin, was the pupil of Agrippa, and like his master was 
something given to mockery and even to unbelief. He thought that 
the sorcerers were more foolish than criminal and hence Bodin wrote a 
quarto to demolish him. After Wierus and Bodin, Delrio, and after 
Delrio came Delancre. They are the four great demonologists of the 
Latin orthodoxy. They knew more about devils than the sorcerers, and 
if they were not themselves inquisitors they could have given points to the 
Holy Tribunal. Wierus is priceless for folk-lore, Delancre is a mine of 
information upon ten thousand wonders unheard of even by Gaflarel. 
Nobody reads these books—though they are quoted and appraised—hence 


NOTES 


5°9 


nobody is qualified to write the history of magic in the middle ages. It 
is doubtful if Levi himself had done more than glance at them ; though a 
brilliant, he was by no means a profound scholar. Goethe evidently read 
them, but, poet or philosopher, the German ignores nothing which is in the 
range of his subject. The “ Infidelity and Enormity of Sorcery plainly 
Established” and the “Table of the Inconstancy of Evil Angels and 
Demons ” are the two books of Delancre, quaint in titles and big enough 
for M. Bataille. 

Note 30. 

The demonographers tell us that Peter d’Apono was a prince of sorcerers 
who accomplished wonders commonly considered impossible even for 
magic. The critics tell us that he was a strong-minded person who 
believed little in God or devil. Above all they warn us from attributing 
to him the dread little treatise which is responsible for his magical reputa¬ 
tion, namely, “ The Heptameron, or Magical Elements,” for he was not 
a disciple of Agrippa, he did not consecrate the week to operations of 
black magic, and the volume in which the “ Heptameron ” was first pub¬ 
lished is one of forged tracts foisted on a number of writers, as, for example, 
the “ Fourth Book of Cornelius Agrippa.” I do not pretend to adjudicate 
between the two parties. Outside alchemy, I believe most persons wrote 
the books attributed to them. Within the charmed circle, any given 
authorship may be doubtful—sometimes impossible. 

Note 31. 

In an interesting notice of this Grimoire found in his “ History of 
Magic,” Eliphas Levi, with much appearance of plausibility, fixes its 
authorship on Cadulus, bishop of Parma, that is, the anti-pope set up by 
the emperor Henry IV., and a man who by his intrigues, debauchery, and 
simony, may be supposed to have been capable of every enormity. The 
argument, however ingenious, is of course entirely conjectural, and no 
proof is offered that the personage in question had any connection with 
the sorcery and diabolism of his century. What is certain in any case is 
this, that the saintly and eminent pontiff whose name it bears, neither was 
nor could have been its author. By a typographical error, or an error in 
transcription, this Grimoire is occasionally attributed to Honorius III. 


Note 32. 

But this moral disorder must not be necessarily attributed to the 
individual who pays its physical penalty ; otherwise, what of hereditary 
diseases ? 


Note 33. 

And it is absolutely true that if a man be bidden to look for anything 
by another whose will dominates but perturbs his own, and whom he fears 
to displease, his anxiety to find it will sometimes so confuse him that he 
will not see the object, though it may be under his very eyes. 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


510 


Note 34. 

This reasoning is ingenious but purely Machiavelian, and the legend 
itself represents the deliberate performance of a miracle to cover and, 
what is worse, to verify a falsehood. It should also be noticed that the 
falsehood was of the most inexcusable kind, being told not to conceal a 
good deed from those who would interfere to prevent it, but that the 
merit of the deed might be increased by its secrecy. It is a curious 
instance of human subtlety turning to evil even such a beautiful counsel 
as that which exhorts us not to let the right hand know the charitable 
actions of the left. And now, if we turn to liliphas Levi’s Histoire de la 
Magie , we find him condemning, in Indian philosophy, the very principle 
which he has upheld—namely, that the wise man cannot lie. In the 
Oupnek’hat, a book of Indian occultism, the following passage occurs :— 
“God is truth, and in Him light and shadow are one only. Whoever 
knows this can never lie, for even when he tries to do so his falsehood 
becomes a truth.” Again, the same work tells us that “it is permitted 
to lie in order to facilitate marriages, to exalt the virtues of a Brahman 
or the qualities of a cow.” This is immoral, doubtless, but it does not 
surpass the spiritual wickedness of the Christian legend which, by repre¬ 
senting a divine miracle covering a falsehood, practically teaches that it 
is allowable to lie in order to exalt the merits of a good work. 

Note 35. 

There is no attempt to explain the suffering—the actual physical mal¬ 
treatment—of the victims of were-wolves on this theory. 


Note 36. 

The sixth division of the mysteries is concerned with the science of the 
prophets, namely, divination and astrology, together with a full account 
of that instrument which is the key of both, as well as qf the entire 
Kabbalah and of all Hermetic literature. As explained by £liphas Levi, 
divination is the exercise of intuition and all divinatory instruments from 
the seering crystal to the Tarot symbols are artifices for awaking the 
faculty. _ The section is without practical value as it contains no instruction 
concerning the direction of intuitive power for attaining accuracy in the 
results. The same observation applies to the remarks on astrology. Levi 
reduces that art to the calculus of probabilities but no calculation is 
possible on the indications which he gives. Where, for example, are the 
materials for “aii exact computation of the starry influences,” if the 
astrological writers of the Decadence and the Middle Ages our available 
authorities, are expositors of superstition ? 

Note 37. 

The life of Jerome Cardan has been written at great length by Henry 
Morley and is accessible to every one. His works fill ten quarto vols. 
and include his own memoirs, which seem occasionally to reflect more 
credit upon his honesty than his good sense. As an astrologer, despite the 


NOTES 


5n 

panegyric pronounced by Eliphas Levi on the process given in the text, he 
seems to have been unfortunate ; he twice calculated the date of his own 
death, and having been wrong on the first occasion was suspected of 
suicide on the second, but this is a tale of his enemies and tastes of the 
unclean thing. However this may be, he is the chief authority on cryptic 
or cipher writing, and his books deserve to be consulted if only on this 
account. He pretends to have had commerce with elementaries, like his 
father before him, and is altogether a very curious personage who has 
been much misjudged by many and unduly admired by the few. Cardan 
died at Rome in 1576. 

Note 38. 

GafFarel, I fear, should not be quoted seriously. His “ Unheard-of 
Curiosities concerning Talismanic Magic” contains a good deal of bizarre 
information, but Providence removed him on the eve of a great folly. 
He was preparing a formidable work upon caverns, hollow places, and 
holes in the earth, including those of the human body, and this appears to 
convict him of absurdity. Perhaps after all it may have indicated only an 
exhaustive erudition on German method, but the orthodox Dictionnaire des 
Sciences Occultes says that it was folly, having possibly regard to his 
Kabbalism. 

Note 39. 

The following supplementary indications concerning a few of the Tarot 
signs have been gleaned from scattered references in the letters to Baron 
Spedalieri. The Juggler signifies the primary intelligence of symbols and 
numbers. The nimbus, with which He is crowned, is the light of life 
equilibrated, like the serpents of Hermes, by the antagonism of motion. 
The Female Pope, in the second Tarot card, wears a tiara with three 
crowns because she is the queen of the three worlds; she is also the 
Divinity made in the image of our love, the human conception of Pro¬ 
vidence, the divine Gnosis. The pillars of the Temple in the fifth Tarot 
figure are Chochmah and Hod ; the two ministers are Binah and Netsah; 
the triple crown of the hierophant represents Kether, Tiphereth, and 
Jesod ; the triple cross in his hand symbolizes Asiah, Jetzirah, and Briah. 
The Emperor or fourth symbol of the Tarot bears the sacred sign of the 
septenary, because the holy Tetragram comprises three persons and four 
relations, as the solar spectrum contains three colours and four primary 
shades ; a phenomenon which reproduces itself by analogy in the musical 
scale. The entire figure is the signature of the Aour or universal light 
understood in its activity. It is the sulphur of the Hermetic philosophers, 
namely, the motive principle of nature or universal heat. It is the 
Odforce. The twelfth figure of the Tarot, or the Hanged Man, represents 
the elixir of life. 

Note 40. 

The seventh division of “The Mysteries of Magic” contains all that 
Eliphas Levi has written upon Hermetic symbolism with the exception of 
his commentary upon the Asch Mezareph and his analysis and interpreta¬ 
tion of the Seven Chapters of Hermes. These are altogether too technical 


512 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


for inclusion in the present digest; they were relegated by Eliphas Levi 
himself to the supplement of La Clef des Grands Mystbres as an illustration 
of the fatigue and toil which his researches spared the ordinary student. 
The Asch Mezareph, a Kabbalistic work on alchemy, may be consulted 
in Dr Wynn Westcott’s handy edition, which does not, however, include 
the commentary of Levi, whose claim to alchemical initiation is unmis¬ 
takably indicated in a letter to Baron Spedalieri:—“I possess the most 
curious MSS. on the Hermetic Art, and I now know all the mysteries of 
the science of Hermes to their very foundation. I have seen the secret 
fire produced, I have seen how the two metallic sperms form themselves 
—the white, which is like mercury, and the red, which is a viscous oil, 
like molten sulphur. I know that gold can be made, but believe me that 
I will never make it. Gold is the sign of work and exchange among men ; 
it is not manufactured, it is earned; and should any one make use of 
another gold than that of commerce, he would in my eyes be a mere 
coiner, the more cowardly because sure of impunity, for, his gold being 
pure, his fraud would be discovered only with his secret, the knowledge 
of which would be universal ruin. It is, therefore, right that the existence 
of this secret should be denied, so that none may search for it. A man 
must be exalted to a sort of moral pontificate to be able to know it and 
never abuse it. The secret is the chemical production of the binary in the 
metallic kingdom. Of one substance two are made, and of these two 
substances one which in no way resembles the first.” 

Note 41. 

“The old Hermetic philosophers used to say that the universal sub¬ 
stance in externalizing itself takes on three forms and three modes : The 
active and motion-producing form—Sulphur ”—not, however, the chemical 
element so called: “The passive and mobile form—Mercury”—which 
has no connection with ordinary quicksilver : “ The equilibrated or mixed 
form—Salt ”—composed of two forces, yet a fixed substance incapable of 
decomposition. “As for its modes, they were called the four elements, 
analogous to oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. Their basic 
principle was that the one substance becomes diversified by motion and 
takes on different appearances according to its polar angulations and 
attractions—each molecule of the one substance being magnetic and 
polarized like the worlds. They believed in perpetual motion, which is 
the supreme arcanum of physics, and thought with reason that by the 
artificial direction of natural forces, it was possible, within a certain 
circle and according to a certain measure, to quicken or retard this 
motion. ”— Letter to Baron Spedalieri. 

Note 42. 

This is apparently the verbum inenarrabile of the Alexandrian School, 
called Ararita by the Kabbalists. “All is enclosed in one word, and in 
a word of four letters—it is the Tetragram of the Hebrews, the Azoth of 
the Alchemists, the Thot of the Bohemians and the Kabbalistic Tarot. 
This word expressed in such various ways signifies God for the profane* 


NOTES 


5i3 


man for the philosophers, and gives to the adept the final word of human 
science and the key of divine power; but he alone can avail himself of it 
who understands the necessity of never revealing it.” ( Dogme de la Haute 
Magie, p. 90.) This is undoubtedly that word referred to in the chapter 
on Divination, the occult name of the Great Arcanum, “ of which the 
sacred Tetragram itself is only the equivalent and image.” Those who 
are mystified by the childish puzzle in which it is there supposed to be 
enclosed will be gratified to learn that according to the Histoire de la 
Magie the mot unique hidden in every sanctuary is Agla. See chapter 
on “The Kabbalah,” page 102 of this digest. 

Note 43. 

That is, how can gold be produced from salt, sulphur, and mercury of the 
common and material kind ? But the gold of the philosophers can be, and 
is, produced from the salt, sulphur, and mercury of the philosophers- 
The so-called metallic transmutation, not being accomplished by the mani¬ 
pulation of ordinary metals and minerals, is not really the transmutation 
of metals, but the application of the adapting powers of the divine and 
immortal spirit to the dead exterior substances of the material world. 

Note 44. 

The following mystification was appended as an “important note” on 
this subject in the second edition of the Dogme et Rituel de la Haute 
Magie. “For the mineral work, the first matter is mineral exclusively, 
but it is not a metal; it is a metallic salt. This matter is called vegetative, 
because it resembles a fruit, and animal, because it produces a species of 
milk and blood. It contains the fire used to dissolve it. 

Note 45. 

The mysterious work of Rabbi Abraham bears much the same relation 
to alchemy as does that of The Three Impostors to another class of 
literature. As it was described at great length by Nicholas Flamel but 
was never seen except by the French adept, it became necessary to manu¬ 
facture it, which was done accordingly. Alchemy is rich in impositions 
and forgeries of this kind, but they are for the most part quite harmless 
because they betray themselves. 


Note 46. 

The eighth section of the “ Mysteries of Magic ” sketches and interprets 
the history of supernaturalism in connection with the claims of those 
modern phenomena which v are dealt with in the ninth section. The inter¬ 
pretation is exceptionally interesting; it accentuates the departure from 
the standpoint of the “Doctrine and Ritual” which began in the “History 
of Magic.” The reader will do well to beware of accepting its extreme 
criticisms as he would do well to beware of the analogous but contrary 
exaggerations of those previous volumes. He must not, for example, 

2 K 


5 I 4 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


suppose that there was a particle of intellectual sincerity in the pretentious 
distinction between the apparitions of Christ after his resurrection and 
those of the dead persons who “appeared to many” at the crucifixion. 
Eliphas Levi believed in the one as much and as little as in the other ; 
when he protects the resurrection of Jesus as a doctrine of faith, he does 
not really indicate that he accepts it as a fact. He is here fooling his 
readers, as he used to fool Baron Spedalieri under the pretence of instructing 
him, and as ultimately it is very probable that he may have attempted to 
fool himself, if he really became reconciled to the Catholic Church. It is 
possible to be a sincere Catholic and to hold in some vague way that the 
definitions of the Church on doctrinal subjects are economics of divine 
truth, which is merely holding that the divine truth escapes or transcends 
perfect expression, but it is not possible to be a sincere Catholic and to 
regard the history of Christ as an allegorical mythos. It is beyond my 
province to say which view is preferable. But I know which is possible in 
the Latin Church, and the reader of this section will not fail to perceive 
that Eliphas Levi is paltering with truth not only as he himself held it, 
but as it was held by “my venerable masters in theology,” to whom he 
was essentially and in all things opposed. As a fact, he had two disabili¬ 
ties, extreme intellectual fickleness, so that he was seldom in the same 
mind, and a passion for saying anything that scintillated. 


Note 47. 

A more inexcusable blunder or a more vicious misrepresentation could 
scarcely be made. The priest simply repeats the words of the Master, 
while repeating the incident of the Last Supper. Here is the liturgy of 
the consecration as it stands in the Ordinary of the Mass. “ We beseech 
Thee, therefore, O Lord, to accept this offering of our service, as also of 
Thy whole family, to dispose our days in Thy peace, to deliver us from 
eternal damnation, and to number us in the flock of Thine elect. Through 
Christ our Lord. Amen. Which oblation we beseech Thee in all things 
to make blessed, approved, ratified, reasonable, and acceptable, that it 
may become unto us the body and blood of Thy most beloved Son, Jesus 
Christ our Lord, who the day before He suffered took bread into His 
holy and venerable hands, and, lifting up His eyes to heaven, unto Thee, 
God His Father Almighty, did bless, break, and give to His disciples, 
saying : Take and eat ye all of this : For this is My body. In like 
manner, after He had supped, taking also this excellent chalice into His 
holy and venerable hands, and giving thanks to Thee, He blessed and gave 
it to His disciples, saying : Take, and drink ye all of this: For this is the 
chalice of My blood of the New and Eternal Testament, the mystery of 
faith, which shall be shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins. 
So often as ye do these things, ye shall do them in remembrance of Me.” 
In common with all true mystics I believe in the exalted symbolism of the 
act and the words which accompanied it, but of this symbolism ^Eliphas 
Levi had not the slightest intelligence. In the unphilosophical sense of 
the term, he was an agnostic, but modified by transcendentalism. 


NOTES 


5*5 


Note 48. 

There is commonly less inconsequence in school-girl essays than in the 
ratiocination of Eliphas Levi. The motto in question is of about the 
same value as a sum of conduct in the Church, as might be expected in a 
heraldic device. Having regard to ecclesiastical history one might 
almost add that if the Church have a horror of blood it is the disgust 
which comes from repletion. 


Note 49. 

The parable of Dives and Lazarus is without application of any kind to 
Levi’s argument. I am not altogether a spiritualist, and am uncon¬ 
cerned here in the defence of their central contention, namely, that the 
souls of the dead can and do occasionally return to earth, but I confess 
that all Levi’s disputations on this subject, like his defences of orthodox 
doctrine, are an insult to the understanding of his readers. In the first 
place, spirit identity is a question of fact and not of science, and, from 
Levi’s own standpoint, the parable in question would have no jurisdic¬ 
tion in a matter which belongs to science. In the second place, the 
possibility of communication between Sheol and Paradise does not involve 
or exclude, and has, in fact, no sort of connection with the possible 
return of the departed to this earth. 

Note 50. 

\ 

A priori objections derived from parables and Kabbalahs would 
rightly fail to influence a person who believed or knew that he had 
evidences for spirit return. Moreover, Eliphas Levi exhibits himself as 
an unintelligent materialist when he makes the question of depth and 
height a difficulty of communication between this world and the world of 
spirits. When he describes the necromancer as shaking dowfl souls from 
the holy ladder he is playing the philosophical buffoon and his proper 
audience would be the Gadarean swine. As to the opinions held by “ the 
best theologians of the Middle Ages,” we have only to remember that he 
who makes the reference has only a few pages previously described these 
writers collectively as “imbecile.” 

Note 51. 

This is a foolish piece of criticism, for the facility would obviously 
depend upon which way the door opened. 

Note 52. 

And yet we have been told that the Astral Light is projected by the 
thumbs and palms of the hands, in which case magnetic passes are 
certainly more than signs ; the will of the operator projects the vital fluid 
by means of them ; but the eternal right of self-contradiction, formally 
claimed by Charles Baudelaire as an imprescriptible part of liberty, has 
ever been included among the possessions of the Frenchman. 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


5 l6 


Note 53. 

We are distinctly and authoritatively told in the chapter devoted to 
Spiritual Transition that the divine and immortal spirit of a man who has 
lived viciously is held captive after death by its astral body, that in this 
envelope it torments dreaming girls, and haunts the places where the 
pleasures of its human life elapsed, in which case, in blank contradiction 
to the statement made in the text, it is evident that souls can and do 
exist in the terrestrial atmosphere after they have departed this life, and 
that as vicious men are unhappily very numerous the air must be swarm¬ 
ing with imprisoned spirits. Those who are in no way committed to the 
spiritualistic hypothesis, which Eliphas Levi was bent on disproving, and, 
it may be added, of vilifying, will perhaps feel bound to confess that the 
animus thus gratified in the face of consistency and reason, is a triumph 
for the doctrine against which it is directed. The accuracy of this view 
is further made evident by the letters to Baron Spedalieri, where it is 
said, “The larvae, the elemental spirits, and the souls in prison, are 
supposed to be immersed in the atmosphere, which is for them the great 
chaos not solidified : chaos injirmatum . The souls of the just, on the 
contrary, are thought to walk upon the great aerial ocean, which has 
become for them the great chaos solidified : chaos magnum firmatum est. 
Those who are submerged are thought to communicate with us by means 
of the astral light—seeking to live at our expense when we attract them 
by our imprudences, while those who have dominated the chaos would 
manifest themselves to us through the light of glory, which is as much 
superior to the astral light as the soul is to the body. But the special 
property of the light of glory is to subjugate the imagination to the spirit, 
and to put an end instantly to the disorder of mere dreams. The light of 
glory never causes intoxication or congestion, because it is immaterial, 
like the divine grace which is its spouse and with which the theologians 
have sometimes confused it. Properly speaking, it is a communication of 
the Supreme Reason imparted to the intelligence of man. It has nothing 
of the marvellous, and naturally blots out in the universal harmonies the 
whole monstrosity of prodigies.” Again: “You must understand that 
the ethereal vortices which cause the movements of tables have nothing in 
common with the light of glory, but obey the blind fatalities of the astral 
light.” 

Note 54. 

A man of humble origin and by trade a turner, Cahagnet became a 
recipient of visions after the manner of Dr Dee, namely, through the 
mediation of a seer, Mademoiselle Adele Maginot. In this way he com¬ 
municated continually with the spirit of Swedenborg, and while Cahagnet 
himself was unable to read or write, he published a number of works 
dictated by his clairvoyant in the ecstatic state. Some of them are ex¬ 
ceedingly curious, especially “Magnetic Magic,” a historical and practical 
treatise concerning fascinations, cabalistic mirrors—Cahagnet had one in 
his possession, and used it frequently—translations, suspensions, pacts, 
necromancy, &c. They have completely passed out of notice, though 
one, I believe, was translated into English, probably the “ Secrets of the 
Future Life Unveiled.” Cahagnet was a contemporary of Levi. 


NOTES 


5i7 


Note 55. 

Eliphas Levi’s whole theory on this subject originates in a sarcasm of 
Voltaire: “ St Dteu a fail Fhomme h son image , Vhomme le lui a bien 
rendu .” 

Note 56. 

A number of statements on the subject of Jesus Christ are scattered up 
and down the Letters to Baron Spedalieri, and some of them would 
appear to represent a considerable approximation to the orthodox view, 
but they can scarcely be taken literally, and Eliphas Levi was no doubt 
trying to impress his disciple with more deferential feelings towards 
hierarchic teaching. The statements may be summarized as follows :— 
In J. C., God made Himself man, and man made himself God. If J. C. 
had been an angel, it would have been necessary to angelify God and 
then incarnate the angel. But this deified angel would have been an 
intermediary God, or spiritual idol. J. C. is man, true man like our¬ 
selves, but divinely personified by the hypostatic union. The divinity 
which we ascribe to [His humanity, and even to His flesh, is a divinity of 
alliance and participation—alliance which He accomplished for us, parti¬ 
cipation to which we are all called. Kings sometimes marry by ambas¬ 
sadors. The ambassador is then, as it were, invested with the personality 
of the king, for the sacrament he receives is received by the king himself. 
It is thus that J. C. is God. He is God as the Pope is J. C. The real 
significance of these points will be understood by reference to an observa¬ 
tion in Letter 87 : “The conception of J. C. is defined by the symbol: 
He was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. It is 
therefore a dogmatic and spiritual reality—but not a historic and scientific 
reality.” 

Note 57. 

Our current proverb, “The Devil is the father of lies,” is, of course, 
an adaptation of Christ’s words, as given in St John viii. 44: —“When 
he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar, and the father 
of it.” This is the rendering of the authorized version, and the reference 
is obviously to the lie. The original says, koX 6 it ar^p avrov, which the 
Vulgate translates el pater ejus , and for this the English Douay version 
reads, “the father thereof.” Levi’s rendering, which is frequently 
repeated throughout his works, is clearly a mistake, giving the sense as if 
it were pater suns. 

Note 58. 

And yet in the Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Rfagie, there is an engrav¬ 
ing of Addhanari, the great Indian Pantacle, which is distinctly said 
to represent Religion and Truth, and to be analogous to the Ado-nai 
of Ezekiel. Now, this figure bears upon its very forehead that lingam 
which is here declared to be a confession of doctrinal shamelessness. The 
contradiction is as complete as words can make it, and its object is 
obviously to discredit all magical marvels occurring outside the hierarchy 
of initiation or the authority of the Latin orthodoxy. 







. 


























. 






























































INDEX 


Abracadabra, 196 
Abraham the Patriarch, 43, 49, 96, 
98, 102, 271 
Abraxos, 69 

Absolute, The, 42, 70, 88, 91, 100. 
172, 290, 292 

Adam, 72, 89, 95, 99, 121, 141, 163 
Adam Kadmon, 99, 149 
Addhanari, 84, 517 
Agla, 101, 102, 402 
Agrippa, Cornelius, 52, 271, 291, 
500 

Alacoque, B. Margaret Mary, 411, 

441 

Albigenses, 56 

Alchemy, see Magnum Opus 
Alexander ab Alexandro, 353, 354 
Alexandria, School of, 71, 209, 293 
Alphonsus de Ligouri, 237 
Amoraimes, 113 
Analogy, see Hermetic Axiom 
Ancient of the Kabbalah, 92 
Anthony, St, ill, 173, 232, 331 
Aour, 136, 314, 369 
Apocalypse, The, 97, 99, 193, 262, 
267, 287 

Apollonius of Tyana, 69, 77, 213, 
243 , 339 , 358 , 446 et seq. 
Apuleius, 232 
Archimedes, 83, 90 
Asiah, 136, 511 

Assyria and Babylonia, 44, 161 
Astral Body, see Sidereal Phantom 
Astral Light, 47, 69, 71, 72, 73, 
76, 77, 80, 101, 146, 147, 148, 
154, 165, 173, 183, 194, 222, 226, 
233, 238, 239, 242, 243, 248, 251, 
299 , 300, 3 QI , 357 , 360, 365, 420 
Astrology, 245-262 
Atziluth, 136 


Aucler, 345 

Azoth, 86, 192, 293, 297 

Bacchic Orgies, 55 
Baphomet, 69, 209, 210, 299 
Basil Valentine, 292, 294 
Behemoth and Leviathan, 114 
Belot, Jean, 259 
Bembine Tablet, 287 
Beni-Elohim, 160 
Bereschith, 115, 123, 127 
Bible, 46 

Binah, 91, 116, 159 
Black Magic, 47, 55, no, 188, 209- 
218, 221 

Blazing Star, 281 

Blood, Mysteries of, 330 et seq. 

Bodin, 209, 214, 508 

Bohme, Jacob, 502 

Boismont, Brierre de, 58, 59, 167 

Briah, 136, 511 

Cadmus, 49, 89, 259 

Caduceus, 69 

Caesar, 409, 442 

Cagliostro, 51, 291, 364 

Cahagnet, 316 

Cain, 95, 96, 257, 333, 337: 

Canidia, 229 

Cardan, Jerome, 51,206, 249, 510 

Cebes, 501 

Chachamines, 113 

Chaigidel, 159 

Chaldaeans, 73 

Charity, 390, 393 

Charvoz, Abbe, 166, 458 et seq . 

Chateaubriand, 81, 410 

Chesed, 89, 90, 91, 159 

Chiromancy, 245, 248 

Chochmah, 90, 116, 159 


519 



5 2 ° 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Chrishna, 396 

Christ, 64, 321, 322, 334, 3 37 , 393 - 
399 , 517 

Church, The, 45, 56, 57, no, 324, 
337 , 347 , 378 , 404 et seq., 417, 
433 , 444 , 456 , 492 , 493, 494, 
496 , 5 I 4 

Circe, 76, 232, 239, 240 
Circumcisionists, 56 
Clavicles of Solomon, 49, 140, 158, 
170, 191, 197, 263, 271 
Cleanthes, 186, 198 
Climacterics, 251 
Confucius, 43 
Conjuration, 181 
Cortices, 156 

Cross, Sign of, 78, 172, 179, 194, 
267, 423 

Dammartin, M. de, 252 
Daniel, 129 
Dante, 52, 143, 501 
D’Arpentigny, Chevalier, 245 
Datura Stramonium, 211, 229, 231 
Delancre, 214, 508 
Delrio, 214, 508 
Desmousseaux, M. G., 377 
Devil, 85, 92, 126, 214, 218, 415- 
421 

Diana Panthea, 213 
Diaphane, 66, 67, 71, 194 
Divination, 52, 181, 241-245 
Divine Comedy, 501 
Dominic, St, 50, 133 
Donatists, 56 
Druids, 226 
Duad, 135 

Duchenteau, 51, 191 
Dumas, 82 

Dupotet, Baron, 58, 243, 360, 500 
Dupuis, 252, 260, 396 

Egypt, 95, 209, 226, 263, 290 
Elementaries, 170 et seq. 

Eleusis, 43 

Elias, 132, 169, 304 

Elizabeth of Hungary, St, 236 

Eliseus, 317, 318 

Elohim, 95, 103, 133, 160, 199 


Embryo tic, 155 
Emerald Table, 292 
Enchiridion, 198, 207, 507 
Endor, Witch of, 315 
Enoch, 43, 49. 169, 259, 262, 264 
Equilibrium, 74-78, 114, 139, 385 
Eros and Anteros, 74, 410 
Etteilla, 269, 270, 279 
Eucharist, 236, 323, 338, 351, 432, 
5 T 4 

Euphorbius, 51 
Evil Eye, see Jettatura 
Evocations, 62 
Extreme Unction, 307 
Ezekiel, 84, 97, 115, 129, 262 

Fascination, 235 

Faust, 143 

Fenelon, 133, 410 

Flamel, Nicholas, 291, 293, 513 

Fourier, 144 

Freemasonry, 44, 113, 115, 119, 
139, 192, 266, 281 

Gadarean Swine, 226 
Gaffarel, 165, 203, 248, 252, 253, 
259, 260, 268, 284, 511 
Gamaliel, 160 
Gamchicoth, 159 

Gebelin, Court de, 197, 265, 266, 
270, 279 

Geburah, 89, 90, 91, 116, 160 
Gedulah, 116, 159 
Gemma, Cornelius, 167 
Ghemara, 112 
Gnomes, 170 

Gnostics, 45, 55, 69, 209, 412 
Goat of Mendes, see Mendes 
Goethe, 143 
Golab, 160 
Golden Fleece, 84 
Great Arcanum, 47, 69, 72, 83-88, 
241, 242, 294, 300, 301, 412, 
420, 440 et seq., 453, 463, 501, 
513 

Great Magic Agent, 67, 68-73* 74 > 
139, 221, 226, 501 
Grimoire, 58, 216, 229, 464 et seq., 
I 507 



INDEX 


.521 


Gyges, Ring of, 234, 236 

Haggada, 112 
Hajoth Haccadosch, 159 
Hallucinations, 147, 161 
Haschmalim, 159 
Heliogabalus, 295 
Hermanubis, 213, 279, 299 
Hermes, 43, 61, 70, 74, 79, 89, 
146, 266, 292, 294 
Hermetic Axiom, 61, 182, 296 
Hermeticism, 48, 291 
Hierarchy, 52, 55, 100, 113, 157, 
158 et seq ., 169, 378, 433 
Hod, 91, 160 

Home, the Medium, 165, 377, 379, 

450 , 451 

Homer, 396, 440 
Hussites, 56 
Hyle, 69 

Iamblichus, 235, 341 
Illuminati, 44 

Imagination, 66, 67, 154, 501 
Imagination of Nature, 73, 420 
Incorporation (in alchemy), 299 
Inri, 86, 286 

Intelligible Worlds, The three, 136 
Isaac de Loria, 142 
Ischim, 160 

Isis, 69, 85, 125, 130, 213, 266 

Jakin and Bohas, 62, 269, 278, 295 

Januarius, St, 318, 338 

Jesod, 91, 160 

Jettatura, 223 

Jetzirah, 136, 162, 511 

Job, 114, 162, 312 et seq. 

Jod, 95, 263, 264, 265, 284, 285, 
287 

Julian the Apostate, 81, 183, 213, 
325, 341 et seq. 

Jupiter, 125, 187, 179 

Kabbalah, 48, 51, 52, 62, 77, 89 et 
seq., 244, 286, 289, 316, 346, 412, 
502, 505 

Kabbalistic Gates, 93, 125 
Kabbalistic Paths, 93 


Kadosch, 115 

Kether, 90, 116, 118, 122, 159,282 
Khunrath, Henry, 210 
Kircher, 287, 500 

Labarum, 205, 207, 216, 266 
Lamartine, Alphonse de, 209 
Larvae, 163, 331, 516 
Light of Glory, 153, 516 
Lilith, 153, 160, 190 
Lingam, 69, 84, 465, 517 
Locusta, 229, 419 

Logos, 61, 66, 67, 95, 99, 104, no, 
174, 236, 394, 400-403 
Louis, St, hi 

Lucifer, 73, 92, 159, 190, 193, 417 
Lucifuge, 73, 159 

Lully, Raymund, 213, 285, 291,293, 

2 97 

Lycanthropy, 237 

Macroprosopus, 104, 171 
Magi, 42, 43, 45, 49, 86 
Magic, 42, 48, 51, 52, 53, 62, 66, 
69, 7L 73> 78, 102, no, 171, 
182, 188, 190, 193, 197, 198, 199, 
201, 203, 206, 208 et seq., 229, 
233, 236, 263, 289, 364, 408, 411, 
440, 450 

Magic Chain, 78-83 
Magic Rod, 206, 207 
Magism, 51 
Magnes, 298 
Magnesia, 291 
Magnetism, 365 

Magnum Opus, 47, 48, 73, 78, 86, 
101, 280, 291-301 

Maistre, Count Joseph de, 44, 331, 
403, 409 
Malachim, 160 

Malchuth, 90, 91, 125, 141, 160 
Manichaeanism, 210 
Maraschim, 112 
Marat, 410 

Marechal, Sylvanus, 183, 327 et seq. 
Mars, 199 

Mary, 103, 190, 249 
Massoretes, 113 

Maximus of Ephesus, 143, 341, 342 





522 


THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC 


Medea, 69, 230, 240 
Medard, Saint, 112, 180, 363 
Metoposcopy, 245 
Mendes, Goat of, 190, 209, 210 
Mensambulance, 370 
Mercury, 198 

Mesmer, 69, 80, 357, 361, 362, 370 
Methodius, St, 315 
Metoposcopy, 245 
Microprosopus, 104, 171 
Mirandola, 94 
Mischna, 115 

Mirville, Count de, 209, 347, 353, 

354 , 377 
Mitatron, 169 
Monad, 134 

Montalembert, Count de, 236 
Morin, M. de, 370, 375 
Moses, 46, 95, 107, 129, 132, 160, 
169, 266, 312 
Moses of Cordova, 144 
Moza, i.e., Vzzah, 51 
Mysteries, Ancient, 43, 263, 332, 
393 

Naemah, 153, 160 
Necromancy, 181-189, 379 
Nero, hi 
N etsah, 91, 160 
Nuctemeron, 504 

Ob and Oboth, 136, 314, 352, 369 
Od Force, 47, 136, 299, 300, 301, 
369 

CEdipus, 332, 334 

Olympus, 344 

Ophanim, 159 

Orpheus, 43 , 55 

Osiris, 74, 85, 125, 266, 393 

Palamedes, 49 
Pantacles, 189 et seq., 203 
Paracelsus, 51, 52,67, 76, 146, 153, 
163, 193, 199, 206, 213, 226, 271, 
285, 293, 331, 500, 505 
Pascal, 63, 99, 503 
Paternoster, 90 

Pentagram, 42, 85, 139, 161, 189 
et seq., 285, 286, 506 


Peter d’Apono, 235, 509 
Peter the Hermit, 79 
Petit Albert, 198, 507 
Pharaoh, 421 

Philosopher’s Stone, 84, 294, 295 
Picus de Mirandola, see Mirandola 
Pistorius,l20, 502 
Plato, 95, 501 
Plotinus, 213 

Postel, William, 52, 103, 262, 264 

et seq. 

Powder of Consecution, 229 
Powder of Projection, 229, 294 
Prometheus, 289 
Protoplastes, 71 
Psyche, 84 

Pythagoras, 49, 51, 145, 265, 293 
Python, Spirit of, 314, 315 

Quinary, 139 
Quintessence, 42, 307 

Rabelais, Fran£ois, 227 
Raymund, History of the Deacon, 
352 

Red Dragon, 189 
Regnum Dei, 279, 440 
Renan, Ernest, 336 
Reuchlin, 94 

Reichenbach, Baron de, 314, 420 
Resurrection, 304 et seq. 

Rosenroth, Baron Knorr de, 
Rosicrucians, 44, 115, 270, 499 
Rota, 86, 264, 269 
Rousseau, Jacques Jean, 50, 54, 297 
Royal Art, 42, 414 

Sabbath, 69, 79, 80, 188, 345, 501 
Sagane, 229 

Saint-Martin, 263, 270, 504 
Saint-Simon, 144 
Salamanders, 177 
Sanctum Regnum, 42, 308 
Sappho, 149 

Satan, 85, hi, 159, 161, 165, 187, 
, 319 

Saturn, 200 
Satariel, 159 
Saufridius, Paul, 166 




INDEX 


523 


Scapegoat, 209, 210 
Schema, 162 

Schemahamphorash, 76, 102, 128 
Schrcepffer, 143 
Seal of Solomon, 107, 116, 195 
Senary, 77, 139 
Semiramis, 235 
Sepher Dzeniouta, 97 
Sepher Druschim, 142 
Sepher Jetzirah, 49, 94, 96, 98, 100, 
271, 301, 500 
Sepher Toldos Jeschu, 103 
Sephiroth, 91, 121, 141, 246 
Septenary, 140 
Seraphim, 160 

Sidereal Phantom, 146, 148, 149, 

237, 363 

Solomon, 49, 98, 102, 107, 162 
Sphinx, 46, 95, 266, 279 
Spinoza, 209 
Spranger, 214 
Spiridion, 189, 324 et seq. 

Spiritism, no, 158, 165, 166, 169, 
314, 322, 339, 345, 352, 369-382 
Stauros, 139 

Swedenborg, 71, 144, 173, 263 
Sylphs, 174 

Symbolism, 395, 399, 507 
Synesius, 145, 267 

Tabor, 132 

Tagaririm, 160 

Talmud, 97, 112 et seq., 102 

Tarot, 48, 49, 84, 102, 103, 117, 

128, 241, 244, 252, 256-259, 262- 
288, 511 

Tau, 68, 423 
Telesma, 146 

Templars, 44, 120, 209, 299 
Tenaimes, 113 
Terrestrial Paradise, 123 
Tertullian, 339, 389 
Tetractys, 138 
Tetrad, 138, 268 

Tetragram, 85, 91, 95 , 9 6 , Ior , io 3 , 

129, 138, 161, 235, 241, 265, 285, 
286 

Tetragrammaton, 179, i &7 
Thamiel, 159 


Thaumaturgy, 52, 304 
Thebes, 163 
Theraphim, 269 
Theresa, St, 232, 331, 441 
Theurgy, 52 
Tiberius, 66 

Tiphereth, 91, 116, 135, 160 
Tora, 117, 265, 266 
Transfiguration, 397 
Translucid, 66, 154, 243, 501 
Transmutation, 53, 62, see Magnum 
Opus 

Transubstantiation, 236, 323 
Trevisan, Bernard, 292, 294 
Triad, 136 
Trimalcyon, 81, ill 
Trinity, 101, 136, 137, 195 
Trithemius, 52, 199, 251, 506 
Turba Philosophorum, 292 
Tycho Brahe, 51, 191 
Typhon, 85, 209, 279, 290 

U do, Archbishop, 349 et seq. 
Ulysses, 76 
Undines, 176 

Universal Medicine, 301-307 

Urban Grandier, 373 

Urim and Thummim, 269, 285 

Vampires, 352 
Vaudois, 56 
Venus, 160, 199, 281 
Vincent of Paul, St, 133, 338, 410 
Vintras, Eugene, 164, 166, 453 et 
seq. 

Voltaire, 79, 114, 186, 311 
Volney, 396, 410 

Wandering Jew, 221, 480 et seq. 
Were-wolves, 237 
Will-Power, 62-66 
Witchcraft, 219 et seq. 

Xavier, St Francis, 237 

Zero, 141 

Zohar, 49, 97, 98, 99 . 100, 103, 
104, 131, 156, 249, 500 
Zoroaster, 43, 48, 52,186 



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